Quotes By Cyril Connolly

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

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

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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