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
small-numbers civilization people
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.
literature tasks produce
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
faithful literature loyal
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
christian atheism poison
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
class delirium-tremens apathy
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
art fall dark
The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.
love strong pain
There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.
beach children home
Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.
hurt pain hate
There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.
book party writing
There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.
birthday book thirty
No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
sadness reality wind
Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
dating suffering bees
Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.
swim wicked body
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.