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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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We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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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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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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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
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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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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.
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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.
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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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The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
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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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The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.
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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
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