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
learnt life maze turn walk wrong
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk
disliked given life moments total
I have always disliked myself at any given moment; the total of such moments is my life
condemned himself lazy starts talents whatever
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he starts out, have condemned himself to second-rate thoughts, and to second-rate friends
butchers fear irrational life policemen publishers repressed supposed
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with irrational fear of life become publishers
art enemy good hall somber
There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall
dream children hate
There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, popularity, vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may learn to cease from hating. Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noises.
funny death suicide
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
dream selfish night
Beneath this mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivilous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit ridden, I let it reform.
dream waste understood
Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time.
problem should seems
The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals
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.
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.
infidelity age causes
It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.
arguing modern poet
Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.