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The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

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
Civilization
Becomes
Next
Decadence
Manure
Epoch

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
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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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A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
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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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An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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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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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
Cyril Connolly
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Sheep with a nasty side.
Cyril Connolly
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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
Cyril Connolly
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In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
Cyril Connolly
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
Cyril Connolly