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
revenge genius aging
Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
mind quality taste
No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
emotional unbearable youth
In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
men years garbage-cans
When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?
water tranquility repose
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
vices worship worst
The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
friendship respect lasts
Friendships that last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from them.
lonely fear loneliness
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
love
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
sick misery forget
It is a consolation of human life that the sick forget what it is like to feel well, or the miserable to be happy.
civilization luxury goal
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
running taken air
The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.
pain golden-moments pleasure
The refractory pupil of Socrates, Aristippus the Cyrene, who believed happiness to be the sum of particular pleasures and golden moments and not, as Epicurus, a prolonged intermediary state between ecstasy and pain.
war world able
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.