Cyril Connolly Quotes

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Inspiration, Health

  Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2

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• 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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Suicide, Responsible

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Lying, Autumn, Sun

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• 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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Alive, Literature

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• 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.

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• No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.

  Cyril Connolly

  Made, Brothels, Wretched

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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Two, People

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• 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.

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• 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

  20 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Motivational, Disappointment, Loss

  The Unquiet Grave Pt I

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• 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

  14 Copy quote

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• 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.

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Happiness, Passion, Justice

  9 Copy quote

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• In the sex-war, thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated, but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said, we have still to admit, with Byron, that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted, more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty, deceit and revenge is set alight, it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sex, Revenge, War

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• 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.

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• 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

  Pain, Grief, Doe

  Cyril Connolly (1960). “Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas”

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• How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?

  Cyril Connolly

  Book, Writing, Paint

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• The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

  Cyril Connolly

  Food, Loss, Purpose

  The Unquiet Grave Pt I

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• 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

  Food, Cooking, Abuse

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• 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

  Animal, Thinking, Literature

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Nice, Writing

  David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly (1984). “Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir”

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