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

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Sheep with a nasty side.
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In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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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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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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Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems
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.
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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
Cyril Connolly
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Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.
Cyril Connolly
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
Cyril Connolly
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The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
Cyril Connolly
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
Cyril Connolly
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We fear something before we hate.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
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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Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.
Cyril Connolly
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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
Cyril Connolly