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
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.
passion past serenity
No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
suicide creative despair
When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
suicide responsible
There is no suicide for which all society is not responsible.
love-is essentials elation
It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
appreciation hands people
Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
lasts firsts miserable
Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.