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
wine sun taught
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
morning lying night
If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.
men perfect unions
In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
ends avoiding
Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.
dream self years
In the dream of approaching forty I saw myself as about to die and realized that I was no longer myself, but a creature inhabited entirely by parasites, as a caterpillar is occupied by the grubs of the ichneumon fly. Gin, whisky, sloth, fear, guilt, tobacco, had made themselves my inquilines; alcohol sloshed about within, while tendrils of melon and vine grew out of ears and nostrils; my mind was a worn gramophone record, my true self was such a ruin as to seem non-existent, and all this had happened in the last three years.
lying body spirit
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
suicide responsible
There is no suicide for which all society is not responsible.
friendship girl cousin
In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.
mistake reality interesting
A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.
suicide creative despair
When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
people waiting anxiety
We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.
ignorance passion darkness
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
marriage independence achieve
Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence.
beach art genius
The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.