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
stupid intelligent law
English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid; one attractive, one vulgar; one noble, one ape-like; one serious and sincere, one undignified and false; one far-sighted, one short; EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter.
disappointment loss boredom
Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.
friendship girl cousin
In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.
ignorance passion darkness
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
responsibility world tire
We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility.
names infinite live-in-the-present
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
lamps way peeking
The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
tree green epitaph
Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.
rivers sitting tipping
The English language is like a broad river on whose bank a few patient anglers are sitting, while, higher up, the stream is being polluted by a string of refuse-barges tipping out their muck.
real passion two
A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive.
mistake matter good-work
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.
sheep insulting sides
Sheep with a nasty side.
cheating revenge infidelity
A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
art reality past
Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.