Quote

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

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
Active
Countries
Neither
Civilization
Deposit
Present
Combustion
Past
Deposits
Without
Formed
Country
Discovered

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
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When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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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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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
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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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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
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Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
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Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
Cyril Connolly
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Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities it is all they have to insure their places in the world.
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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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