Quotes by Connolly, Cyril




Cyril Connolly (10 September 1903 - 26 November 1974) was an English man of letters..

"The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next."

Connolly, Cyril on decadence
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"Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph -- green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree."

Connolly, Cyril on epitaphs
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"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."

Connolly, Cyril on exile    Share

"The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life."

Connolly, Cyril on food and eating    Share

"There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God."

Connolly, Cyril on god
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"Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear."

Connolly, Cyril on greed    Share

"A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom."

Connolly, Cyril on hotels    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on idleness    Share

"We must select the Illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy."

Connolly, Cyril on illusion    Share

"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once."

Connolly, Cyril on journalism and journalists
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"A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends."

Connolly, Cyril on laziness
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"We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving."

Connolly, Cyril on love
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"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."

Connolly, Cyril on love
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"Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union."

Connolly, Cyril on marriage    Share

"The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married."

Connolly, Cyril on marriage
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"Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control."

Connolly, Cyril on memory    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on women
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"Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signaling to be let out."

Connolly, Cyril on obesity    Share

"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."

Connolly, Cyril on art
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"The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure."

Connolly, Cyril on art    Share

"We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self."

Connolly, Cyril on prison    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on publishing and publishers    Share

"The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave."

Connolly, Cyril on reason    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on science    Share

"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."

Connolly, Cyril on sin    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on solitude    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on style    Share

"There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say."

Connolly, Cyril on suicide
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"All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others."

Connolly, Cyril on charm    Share

"Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising."

Connolly, Cyril on talent    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on taste    Share

"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."

Connolly, Cyril on terrorism    Share

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

Connolly, Cyril on tranquility    Share

"Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste."

Connolly, Cyril on vulgarity    Share

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