Cyril Connolly Quotes

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self.
Cyril Connolly
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.
Cyril Connolly
The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Cyril Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.
Cyril Connolly
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we learn to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
A writer who takes up journalism abandons the slow tempo of literature for a faster one and the change will do him harm. By degrees the flippancy of journalism will become a habit and the pleasure of being paid on the nail and more especially of being praised on the nail grow indispensable.
Cyril Connolly
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.
Cyril Connolly
The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Cyril Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.
Cyril Connolly
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we learn to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
A writer who takes up journalism abandons the slow tempo of literature for a faster one and the change will do him harm. By degrees the flippancy of journalism will become a habit and the pleasure of being paid on the nail and more especially of being praised on the nail grow indispensable.
Cyril Connolly
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
Cyril Connolly
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
Cyril Connolly
Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate it a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.
Cyril Connolly
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
Cyril Connolly
The secret of happiness ... is to be in harmony with existence to be always calm always lucid always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot " to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly
Greed like the love of comfort is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
Cyril Connolly
The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.
Cyril Connolly
All charming people have something to conceal usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril Connolly
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
A ceremony of self-wastage - good talkers are miserable they know that they have betrayed themselves that they have taken material which should have a life of its own to disperse it in noises upon the air.
Cyril Connolly
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence to be always calm ... to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no
Cyril Connolly
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Cyril Connolly
Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
Cyril Connolly
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." - "Meglio scrivere per se stessi e non avere un pubblico piuttosto che scrivere per gli altri e non essere se stessi".
Cyril Connolly
Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon.The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction.
Cyril Connolly
It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
Cyril Connolly
It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
Cyril Connolly
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
Cyril Connolly
When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
Cyril Connolly
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.", February 25, 1933]
Cyril Connolly