Quote

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

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
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The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
Cyril Connolly
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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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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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Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems
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We fear something before we hate.
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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
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The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
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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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.
Cyril Connolly
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
Cyril Connolly