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Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

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
Literature
Bombs
Need
Terrorism
Needs
Prison
People
Places
Civilization
Blot
Number
Prisons
Numbers
Maintained
Small
Altogether

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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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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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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
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It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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We fear something before we hate.
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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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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.
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The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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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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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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The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.
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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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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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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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No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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