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
infidelity age causes
It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.
believe judgement hell
Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
failure bitterness overrated
Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
country past civilization
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.
able teach headmistress
The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.
civilization next decadence
The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
class movement ass
M is for Marx And clashing of classes And movement of masses And massing of asses.
dresses belief crabs
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
men perfect unions
In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
people waiting anxiety
We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.
survival language flux
The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
art blow noses
He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.
movement scandal publicity
An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.
morning lying night
If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.