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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.

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
Forgiven
Civilized
Likely
Atheism
Civilization
Literature
Life
Uncivilized

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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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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.
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The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
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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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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
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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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In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
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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.
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A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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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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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.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
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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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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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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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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