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

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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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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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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
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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 artist secretes nostalgia around life.
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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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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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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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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
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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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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
Cyril Connolly
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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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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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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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The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
Cyril Connolly