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

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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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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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
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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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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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We fear something before we hate.
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The lesson one can learn from Firbank is that of inconsequence. There is the vein which he tapped and which has not yet been fully exploited.
Cyril Connolly
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When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
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A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
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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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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.
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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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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
Cyril Connolly
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There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
Cyril Connolly
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Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
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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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Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.
Cyril Connolly
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly