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
civilization luxury goal
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
education disappointment school
Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.
people promise capacity
Promise is the capacity for letting people down.
travel past years
A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
happiness tyranny egotism
We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
nature ideas gains
The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea of its richness and meaning.
eye facts tomorrow
Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow.
writing style language
An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
artist nostalgia
The artist secretes nostalgia around life.
dresses belief crabs
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
able teach headmistress
The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.
friendship respect lasts
Friendships that last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from them.
vices worship worst
The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
water tranquility repose
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.