Quotes By Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?

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.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

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.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.

When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.

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.

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

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.

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.