Quote

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

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
Years
Year
Journalist
Posing
Make
Write
Holes
Article
Sluggard
Good
Action
Critics
Review
Soothed
Always
Money
Criticism
Articles
Opiate
Give
Air
Hole
Fortnight
Book
Writer
Reviews
Opiates
Giving
Novel
Dislike
Resolving
Writing
Easier
Novels
Crank

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
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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 can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
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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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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
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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.
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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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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.
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
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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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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
Cyril Connolly
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Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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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
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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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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There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
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From now on - specialize never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique.
Cyril Connolly