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
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.
book writing air
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.
hate hatred dividends
Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectified. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.
self optimism negative
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
sarcastic sarcasm intelligence
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
art enemy atheism
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
hands lazy laziness
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
sweet past smell
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
nature men literature
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.