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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.

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
Good
Expatriates
Exile
Matters
Expect
Mistake
Literature
Matter
Work

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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We fear something before we hate.
Cyril Connolly
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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
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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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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Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
Cyril Connolly
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly
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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
Cyril Connolly
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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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Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
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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The artist secretes nostalgia around life.
Cyril Connolly
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
Cyril Connolly
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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
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.
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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The lesson one can learn from Firbank is that of inconsequence. There is the vein which he tapped and which has not yet been fully exploited.
Cyril Connolly
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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
Cyril Connolly
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We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.
Cyril Connolly
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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly