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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
Matter
Work
Good
Expatriates
Exile
Matters
Expect
Mistake
Literature

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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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.
Cyril Connolly
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Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
Cyril Connolly
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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
Cyril Connolly
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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
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
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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
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
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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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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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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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.
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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When in doubt, choose greatness.
Cyril Connolly
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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
Cyril Connolly
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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
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Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.
Cyril Connolly