Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connollywas a literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizonand wrote Enemies of Promise, which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth10 September 1903
lying body spirit
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
new-york men economic
That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
together drink believer
In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
beautiful women thinking
Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.
civilization forgiven civilized
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
writing stories veins
The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.
emotion reason violent
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
problem should seems
The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals
believe people given
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.
pain grief tasks
No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.
women wife lovers
There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
believe beer over-you
It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
love doubt would-be
In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.
abuse dining culture
Dining out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit punished by remorse. We eat, drink, and talk a little too much, abuse all our friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to diminish those who take part in them. They end on Monkey Hill.