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
abuse dining culture
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.
sex revenge war
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.
class movement ass
M is for Marx And clashing of classes And movement of masses And massing of asses.
problem should seems
The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals
stress environmental entering
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
emotion reason violent
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
love doubt would-be
In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.
opinion
Everyone has the right to express an opinion. No one has the right to be listened to.
writing stories veins
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.
civilization forgiven civilized
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
artist imagination today
Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
writing dark purple
When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
unique ninety-nine advice
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.
greatness doubt when-in-doubt
When in doubt, choose greatness.