Famous Cyril Connolly Quotations

First 1 Last 
"The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married."
by Cyril Connolly
"There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say."
by Cyril Connolly
"There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream."
by Cyril Connolly
"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once."
by Cyril Connolly
"All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others."
by Cyril Connolly
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
by Cyril Connolly
"Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you."
by Cyril Connolly
"As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with irrational fear of life become publishers."
by Cyril Connolly
"Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable."
by Cyril Connolly
"Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate it a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise."
by Cyril Connolly
"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice."
by Cyril Connolly
"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be read once."
by Cyril Connolly
"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once."
by Cyril Connolly
"Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control."
by Cyril Connolly
"The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next."
by Cyril Connolly
"Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first call promising."
by Cyril Connolly
"What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?"
by Cyril Connolly
"When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post."
by Cyril Connolly
"I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits. It is the style of all the writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean to and more than they feel. It is the style of most artists and all humbug."
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."
by Cyril Connolly
"The hunt for young authors who, while maintaining a prestige value (with a r"
by Cyril Connolly
"If our elaborate and dominating bodies are given us to be denied at every turn, if our nature is always wrong and wicked, how ineffectual we are - like fishes not meant to swim."
by Cyril Connolly
"As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers."
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."
by Cyril Connolly
"No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning."
by Cyril Connolly
"Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past."
by Cyril Connolly
"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."
by Cyril Connolly
"I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up."
by Cyril Connolly
"Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium."
by Cyril Connolly
"Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signaling to be let out."
by Cyril Connolly
"Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph -- green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree."
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."
by Cyril Connolly
"There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God."
by Cyril Connolly
"Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear."
by Cyril Connolly
"We must select the Illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy."
by Cyril Connolly
"A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossing with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality."
by Cyril Connolly
"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."
by Cyril Connolly
"The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way."
by Cyril Connolly
"The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife."
by Cyril Connolly
"Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control."
by Cyril Connolly
"Promise is the capacity for letting people down."
by Cyril Connolly
"We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self."
by Cyril Connolly
"Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste."
by Cyril Connolly
"The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave."
by Cyril Connolly
"We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life; it is because we tire of our responsibility."
by Cyril Connolly
"Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose."
by Cyril Connolly
"The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food."
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."
by Cyril Connolly
"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."
by Cyril Connolly
"Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eagerly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale crush me and eat me! -- for us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, tea-plant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton."
by Cyril Connolly
"Youth is a period of missed opportunities."
by Cyril Connolly
"Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the ..."
by Cyril Connolly
"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall."
by Cyril Connolly


Hire a Writer