Cyril Connolly Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Novelists, Stories

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.

  Cyril Connolly

  Lying, Body, Spirit

  4 Copy quote

• A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive.

  Cyril Connolly

  Real, Passion, Two

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Hate, Hatred, Dividends

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Memories, Wine, Sunshine

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Love, Strong, Pain

  9 Copy quote

• It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

  Cyril Connolly

  Country, Nature, Book

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Emotion, Reason, Violent

  10 Copy quote

• There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

  Cyril Connolly

  God, Atheism, Pessimistic

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Past, Civilization

  'The Unquiet Grave' (1944) pt. 2

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  9 Copy quote

• We fear something before we hate.

  Cyril Connolly

  Hate, Anticipation

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

  8 Copy quote

• Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.

  Cyril Connolly

  Dresses, Belief, Crabs

  9 Copy quote

• Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.

  Cyril Connolly

  Lasts, Firsts, Miserable

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

  21 Copy quote

• When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.

  Cyril Connolly

  Suicide, Creative, Despair

  5 Copy quote

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Peace, War, Morbid

  Cyril Connolly (1946). “The Condemned Playground”

  8 Copy quote

• There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.

  Cyril Connolly

  Women, Wife, Lovers

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Fall, Dark

  8 Copy quote

• If our elaborate and dominating bodies are given us to be denied at every turn, if our nature is always wrong and wicked, how ineffectual we are; like fishes not meant to swim.

  Cyril Connolly

  Swim, Wicked, Atheism

  6 Copy quote

• Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

  Cyril Connolly

  Tree, Green, Epitaph

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

  78 Copy quote

• Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence.

  Cyril Connolly

  Marriage, Independence, Achieve

  4 Copy quote

• Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom.

  Cyril Connolly

  Selfish, Boredom, Bitterness

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Two, People, Mind

  Cyril Connolly (1953). “Ideas and Places”, London, Weidenfeld

  12 Copy quote

Page 5 of 7

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin