Quotes By Cyril Connolly

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

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

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

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.

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

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.

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.

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

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.

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

Youth is a period of missed opportunities.

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.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

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.

When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.

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