A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Cyril Connolly
2
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
Cyril Connolly
3
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril Connolly
4
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
5
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly
6
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.
Cyril Connolly
7
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
Cyril Connolly
8
For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
Cyril Connolly
9
Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.
Cyril Connolly
10
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
Cyril Connolly
11
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
12
In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
Cyril Connolly
13
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.
Cyril Connolly
14
It is only in the country that we can get to know a fellow-being or a book.
Cyril Connolly
15
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
Cyril Connolly
16
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
Cyril Connolly
17
No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
Cyril Connolly
18
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.
Cyril Connolly
19
No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
Cyril Connolly
20
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
Cyril Connolly
21
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Cyril Connolly
22
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.
Cyril Connolly
23
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
Cyril Connolly
24
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly
25
The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly
26
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Cyril Connolly
27
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly
28
The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
Cyril Connolly
29
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
Cyril Connolly
30
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
Cyril Connolly
31
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.
Cyril Connolly
32
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.
Cyril Connolly
33
Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.
Cyril Connolly
34
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
Cyril Connolly
35
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.
Cyril Connolly
36
When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
Cyril Connolly
37
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
Cyril Connolly
38
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.
Cyril Connolly
39
Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
Cyril Connolly
