Cyril Connolly Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Inspiration, Health

  Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Alive, Literature

• 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

• 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

• Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.

  Cyril Connolly

  Vulgarity Is, Literature, Salad

  "The Condemned Playground". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1945.

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Art, Writing, Literature

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 3

• In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.

  Cyril Connolly

  Cheating, Sex, War

  Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Class, Delirium Tremens, Apathy

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Memories, Cards, Literature

  "Readings" by Michael Dirda, www.washingtonpost.com. March 7, 1999.

• 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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Life, Fear, Publishing Books

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 10

• Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.

  Cyril Connolly

  Love, Greed, Comfort

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

• Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

  Cyril Connolly

  Names, Literature, Infinite

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

• 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

• The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

  Cyril Connolly

  Food, Solitude, Vices

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

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Mind, Quality, Literature

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

• 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

  Mistake, Literature, Matter

  Cyril Connolly (2008). “Enemies of Promise”, p.105, University of Chicago Press

• Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

  Cyril Connolly

  Men, Literature, Fats

  "Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir".

• 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

  Civilization, Atheism, Literature

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Tasks, Literature, Produce

  Cyril Connolly, Peter Quennell (1984). “The selected essays of 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

  Small Numbers, Civilization, People

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Faithful, Literature, Loyal

• 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

  Beach, Children, Home

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Nature, Men, Literature

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Hate, Long, Literature

  Cyril Connolly (1975). “The evening colonnade”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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