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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.

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
Reason
Periods
Life
Except
Short
Youth
Emotional
Emotion
Unbearable
Becomes
Afterwards
Feelings
Sufficient

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A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
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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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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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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
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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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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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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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 true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
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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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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
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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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The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
Cyril Connolly
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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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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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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