Cyril Connolly Quotes

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

Everyone has the right to express an opinion. No one has the right to be listened to.

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

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.

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

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.

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

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

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

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

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality which is unendurable.

If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

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

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

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

The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.

When in doubt, choose greatness.

Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.

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

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

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.