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

  57 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

• There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

  Cyril Connolly

  Art, Enemy, Atheism

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 14

  65 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

  36 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Love, Dream, Lonely

  "Phil Spector: What I've Learned", www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

  9 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.

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Truth, Rivers, Arms

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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Self, Jail, Dungeons

  7 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 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

  19 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Lying, Autumn, Sun

  111 Copy quote

• 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

  Friendship, Respect, Lasts

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

  7 Copy quote

• We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.

  Cyril Connolly

  Happiness, Tyranny, Egotism

  5 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

  11 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

• The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea of its richness and meaning.

  Cyril Connolly

  Nature, Ideas, Gains

  3 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 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

  27 Copy quote

• A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; - such is our personality.

  Cyril Connolly

  Weed, Lying, Flower

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

  7 Copy quote

• No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.

  Cyril Connolly

  Passion, Past, Serenity

  6 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

• 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.

  51 Copy quote

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