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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.

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
Undesirable
Overrated
Bitterness
Failure
Success
Even

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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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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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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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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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
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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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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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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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.
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Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
Cyril Connolly
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
Cyril Connolly
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There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
Cyril Connolly
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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
Cyril Connolly
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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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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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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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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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.
Cyril Connolly