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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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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
Stupid
Latter
Undignified
Serious
Attractive
Sighted
Everybody
False
Invariably
Law
Noble
Apes
Two
English
Vulgar
Like
Intelligent
Cynical
Short
Sincere
Choose
Alternatives

More quotes by 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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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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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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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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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Cyril Connolly
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
Cyril Connolly
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
Cyril Connolly
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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
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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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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
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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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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
Cyril Connolly
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I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
Cyril Connolly
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
Cyril Connolly
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The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
Cyril Connolly
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Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.
Cyril Connolly
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When in doubt, choose greatness.
Cyril Connolly
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There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
Cyril Connolly
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Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
Cyril Connolly