Cyril Connolly Quotes

Quotes about:

• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Respect, Clever

  New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933

  55 Copy quote

• 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?

  Cyril Connolly

  Men, Perfect, Unions

  3 Copy quote

• The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Inspiration, Health

  Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2

  35 Copy quote

• Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

  Cyril Connolly

  Children, Fear, Hate

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

  23 Copy quote

• We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.

  Cyril Connolly

  Self, Jail, Dungeons

  7 Copy quote

• Everyone has the right to express an opinion. No one has the right to be listened to.

  Cyril Connolly

  Opinion

  4 Copy quote

• Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

  Cyril Connolly

  Lying, Autumn, Sun

  109 Copy quote

• If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom.

  Cyril Connolly

  Wisdom, Thinking, Lazy

  17 Copy quote

• The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sweet, Past, Smell

  David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly (1983). “Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir”, HarperCollins

  9 Copy quote

• While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

  Cyril Connolly

  Alive, Literature

  26 Copy quote

• Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.

  Cyril Connolly

  Motivational, Disappointment, Loss

  The Unquiet Grave Pt I

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Stress, Environmental, Entering

  23 Copy quote

• There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating... Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

  Cyril Connolly

  Dream, Children, Hate

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

  13 Copy quote

• All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

  Cyril Connolly

  Appreciation, People, Ego

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 16

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Christian, Atheism, Poison

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Success, Secret

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Civilization, Luxury, Goal

  14 Copy quote

• When in doubt, choose greatness.

  Cyril Connolly

  Greatness, Doubt, When In Doubt

  7 Copy quote

• There is no suicide for which all society is not responsible.

  Cyril Connolly

  Suicide, Responsible

  16 Copy quote

• There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

  Cyril Connolly

  Funny, Death, Suicide

  The Unquiet Grave Pt II

  24 Copy quote

• In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.

  Cyril Connolly

  Love, Doubt, Doctrine

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1945.

  4 Copy quote

• Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Two, People

  18 Copy quote

• No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

  Cyril Connolly

  Morning, Men, Fog

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

  47 Copy quote

• The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.

  Cyril Connolly

  Life, Beautiful, Art

  "The Unquiet Grave" by Cyril Connolly, (Part 2), 1951.

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Unique, Ninety Nine, Advice

  12 Copy quote

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