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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Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.
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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.
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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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Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.
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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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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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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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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.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
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Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly
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Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
Cyril Connolly
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The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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?
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The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
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