Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connollywas a literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizonand wrote Enemies of Promise, which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth10 September 1903
faithful literature loyal
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
literature tasks produce
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
small-numbers civilization people
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.
nature men literature
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
hands lazy laziness
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
sarcastic sarcasm intelligence
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
beach children home
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.
book writing air
I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
life mazes walks
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
dream memories reading
There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
truth rivers arms
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.
artist class pay
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
pain grief tasks
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.
mistake matter good-work
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.