Quote

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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Cyril Connolly
Age: 71 †
Born: 1903
Born: September 10
Died: 1974
Died: November 26
Critic
Literary Critic
Novelist
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Cyril Vernon Connolly
Pain
Union
Lives
Unions
Strong
Lovers
Another
Beginning
Contaminate
Two
Equal
Inflict
Enough
Rest
Avoidance
Made
Wisdom
Contemplate
Love
Clear
Contemplating

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
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We fear something before we hate.
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Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
Cyril Connolly
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Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
Cyril Connolly
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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
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In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
Cyril Connolly
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Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
Cyril Connolly
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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From now on - specialize never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique.
Cyril Connolly
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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
Cyril Connolly
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If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.
Cyril Connolly
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Cyril Connolly