Quote

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

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
Good
Expatriates
Exile
Matters
Expect
Mistake
Literature
Matter
Work

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

Image
Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly
Image
For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
Cyril Connolly
Image
When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
Cyril Connolly
Image
A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
Cyril Connolly
Image
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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
No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
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
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
Cyril Connolly