Quote

Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.

Cyril Connolly

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Upon
Longevity
Revenge
Aging
Intelligence
Intellectual
Genius
Talent

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Cyril Connolly
Image
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
Cyril Connolly
Image
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
Cyril Connolly
Image
In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
Cyril Connolly
Image
No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
Cyril Connolly
Image
It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
Cyril Connolly
Image
When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The artist secretes nostalgia around life.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly