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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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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
Littles
Shore
Little
Wave
Always
Calm
Life
Harmony
Existence
Secret
Literature
Farther
Success
Wash

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Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.
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The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.
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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
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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.
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Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
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We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid one attractive, one vulgar one noble, one ape-like one serious and sincere, one undignified and false one far-sighted, one short EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter.
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We create the world in which we live if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.
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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
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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.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
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The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
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Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
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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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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
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