Cyril Connolly Quotes

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married... view

By: Cyril Connolly

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning... view

By: Cyril Connolly

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book... view

By: Cyril Connolly

No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.. view

By: Cyril Connolly

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above... view

By: Cyril Connolly

A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends... view

By: Cyril Connolly

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose... view

By: Cyril Connolly

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent... view

By: Cyril Connolly

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out... view

By: Cyril Connolly

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you... view

By: Cyril Connolly

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether... view

By: Cyril Connolly

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female... view

By: Cyril Connolly

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book... view

By: Cyril Connolly

It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out... view

By: Cyril Connolly

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?.. view

By: Cyril Connolly

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Hate is the consequence of fear.. view

By: Cyril Connolly

Youth is a period of missed opportunities... view

By: Cyril Connolly

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives... view

By: Cyril Connolly

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action... view

By: Cyril Connolly

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth... view

By: Cyril Connolly