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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

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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
Cannot
Without
Pessimistic
Disappointing
God
Atheism
Soon
Personal
Religion

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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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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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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 only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
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An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
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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.
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
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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.
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Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
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Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.
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.
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When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
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.
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