Cyril Connolly Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied

  Cyril Connolly

  Emotion, Reason, Violent

  10 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Food, Solitude, Vices

  David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly (1983). “Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir”, HarperCollins

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Cyril Connolly

  Book, Writing, Air

  27 Copy quote

• It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.

  Cyril Connolly

  Infidelity, Age, Causes

  13 Copy quote

• An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Style, Language

  Cyril Connolly (2008). “Enemies of Promise”, p.17, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  God, Atheism, Pessimistic

  7 Copy quote

• Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.

  Cyril Connolly

  Memories, Wine, Sunshine

  6 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Freedom, Liberty, Action

  7 Copy quote

• 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 discovered.

  Cyril Connolly

  Country, Past, Civilization

  'The Unquiet Grave' (1944) pt. 2

  7 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Art, Writing, Literature

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 3

  9 Copy quote

• Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.

  Cyril Connolly

  Peace, War, Morbid

  Cyril Connolly (1946). “The Condemned Playground”

  7 Copy quote

• When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.

  Cyril Connolly

  Suicide, Creative, Despair

  4 Copy quote

• Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.

  Cyril Connolly

  Lasts, Firsts, Miserable

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

  19 Copy quote

• A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.

  Cyril Connolly

  Cheating, Revenge, Women

  11 Copy quote

• There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.

  Cyril Connolly

  Women, Wife, Lovers

  4 Copy quote

• Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

  Cyril Connolly

  Tree, Green, Epitaph

  David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly (1983). “Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir”, HarperCollins

  78 Copy quote

• Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence.

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Independence, Achieve

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Cyril Connolly

  Swim, Wicked, Atheism

  5 Copy quote

• Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom.

  Cyril Connolly

  Selfish, Boredom, Bitterness

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

  4 Copy quote

• Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

  Cyril Connolly

  Two, People, Mind

  Cyril Connolly (1953). “Ideas and Places”, London, Weidenfeld

  12 Copy quote

• When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Dark, Purple

  Cyril Connolly (2008). “Enemies of Promise”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.

  Cyril Connolly

  Arguing, Poet, Modern

  4 Copy quote

• It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.

  Cyril Connolly

  Love Is, Essentials, Elation

  Cyril Connolly (2008). “Enemies of Promise”, p.136, University of Chicago Press

  20 Copy quote

• He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

  Cyril Connolly

  Art, Blow, Noses

  68 Copy quote

• The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.

  Cyril Connolly

  War, World, Able

  1944 The Unquiet Grave, pt.2.

  4 Copy quote

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