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Cyril Connolly

Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 - 26 November 1974) was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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Those whom the gods would destroy, they first call promising.

– Cyril Connolly

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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

– Cyril Connolly

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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

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I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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

– Cyril Connolly

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The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.

– Cyril Connolly

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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.

– Cyril Connolly

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The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

– Cyril Connolly

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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.

– Cyril Connolly

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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?

– Cyril Connolly

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