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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

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
Firsts
Sarcastic
First
Gods
Destroy
Intelligence
Promise
Prelude
Talent
Promising
Call
Neurosis
Wish
Sarcasm

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A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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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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Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
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Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
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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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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
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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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Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
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Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.
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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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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.
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly
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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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We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
Cyril Connolly
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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
Cyril Connolly