110+ Cyril Connolly Quotes On Conflict, Culture And Crucible

Cyril Connolly was an English intellectual, writer, and literary critic. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon, which he founded in 1940. Connolly is best remembered for his autobiographical work, The Unquiet Grave, which was published in 1945. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Cyril Connolly on leadership, conflict, life.

Top 10 Cyril Connolly Quotes

1. Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
2. He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.
3. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
4. There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
5. 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.
6. All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
7. The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
8. No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
9. Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.
10. While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

Cyril Connolly Short Quotes

• In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
• Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
• Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
• We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
• Everything is a dangerous drug except reality which is unendurable.
• Promise is the capacity for letting people down.
• The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
• The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.
• It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.
• No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.

Cyril Connolly Quotes About Life

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life. — Cyril Connolly

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication. — Cyril Connolly

No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life. — Cyril Connolly

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self. — Cyril Connolly

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people." — Cyril Connolly

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied — Cyril Connolly

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

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk. — Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Quotes About Writing

The books I haven't written are better than the books other people have. — Cyril Connolly

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once. — Cyril Connolly

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you. — Cyril Connolly

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once. — Cyril Connolly

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

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

The hunt for young authors who, while maintaining a prestige value (with a r — Cyril Connolly

I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits. It is the style of all the writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean to and more than they feel. It is the style of most artists and all humbug. — Cyril Connolly

When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post. — Cyril Connolly

How many books did Renoir write on how to paint? — Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Quotes About Fear

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

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say. — Cyril Connolly

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. — Cyril Connolly

We fear something before we hate. — Cyril Connolly

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us. — Cyril Connolly

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. — Cyril Connolly

Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking. — Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Quotes About Writer

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. — Cyril Connolly

Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun. — Cyril Connolly

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe. — Cyril Connolly

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence. — Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Famous Quotes And Sayings

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form. — Cyril Connolly

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up. — Cyril Connolly

Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems — Cyril Connolly

It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential. — Cyril Connolly

Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium. — Cyril Connolly

The English language is like a broad river on whose bank a few patient anglers are sitting, while, higher up, the stream is being polluted by a string of refuse-barges tipping out their muck. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality. — Cyril Connolly

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

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy. — Cyril Connolly

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium. — Cyril Connolly

From now on - specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique. — Cyril Connolly

That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center. — Cyril Connolly

Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment. — Cyril Connolly

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

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. — Cyril Connolly

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. — Cyril Connolly

When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types. — Cyril Connolly

Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way. — Cyril Connolly

A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions. — Cyril Connolly

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure. — Cyril Connolly

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

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising. — Cyril Connolly

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

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature. — Cyril Connolly

In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. — Cyril Connolly

When in doubt, choose greatness. — Cyril Connolly

The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him. — Cyril Connolly

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up. — Cyril Connolly

Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom. — Cyril Connolly

English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid; one attractive, one vulgar; one noble, one ape-like; one serious and sincere, one undignified and false; one far-sighted, one short; EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter. — Cyril Connolly

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control. — Cyril Connolly

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

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. — Cyril Connolly

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph -- green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree. — Cyril Connolly

The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream. — Cyril Connolly

The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back. — Cyril Connolly

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose. — Cyril Connolly

Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice. — Cyril Connolly

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste. — Cyril Connolly

Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius. — Cyril Connolly

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

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

No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian. — Cyril Connolly

Dining out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit punished by remorse. We eat, drink, and talk a little too much, abuse all our friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to diminish those who take part in them. They end on Monkey Hill. — Cyril Connolly

Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy. — Cyril Connolly

We must select the Illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy. — Cyril Connolly

Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations. — Cyril Connolly

The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God. — Cyril Connolly

No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind. — Cyril Connolly

Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer. — Cyril Connolly

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

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time. — Cyril Connolly

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. — Cyril Connolly

Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground. — Cyril Connolly

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signaling to be let out. — Cyril Connolly

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 encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past. — Cyril Connolly

Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality. — Cyril Connolly

There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream. — Cyril Connolly

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together. — Cyril Connolly

Life Lessons by Cyril Connolly

1. Cyril Connolly taught that life is to be lived to its fullest, and that one should take risks and embrace the unknown in order to find true fulfillment.
2. He also believed that one should strive to find their own unique voice and perspective, and to never be afraid to express themselves.
3. Finally, Connolly taught that it is important to be open to new ideas and experiences, and to never be afraid to challenge the status quo.