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
men years garbage-cans
When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?
emotional unbearable youth
In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
mind quality taste
No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
swim wicked body
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.
dating suffering bees
Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.
sadness reality wind
Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
birthday book thirty
No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
self optimism negative
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
lonely fear loneliness
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
book party writing
There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.
love strong pain
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.
art fall dark
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.
class delirium-tremens apathy
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
christian atheism poison
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.