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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

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
Members
Pay
Class
Artist
Art
Leisured
Cannot
Classes
Leisure
Member

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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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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.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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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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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.
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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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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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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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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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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.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
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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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The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
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