It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.
Cyril Connolly
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Cyril Connolly quotes
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.
It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.
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.
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious "retreat" of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
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.
For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
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.
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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.
No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.
The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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.
Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river.
Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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.
Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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