Quote

We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.

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
People
Dues
Assuming
Anxiety
Late
Waiting
Wish
Symbolically
Keep
Punctual
May
Assume

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Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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When in doubt, choose greatness.
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The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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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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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
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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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Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
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The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
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The lesson one can learn from Firbank is that of inconsequence. There is the vein which he tapped and which has not yet been fully exploited.
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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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Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.
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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
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English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid one attractive, one vulgar one noble, one ape-like one serious and sincere, one undignified and false one far-sighted, one short EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter.
Cyril Connolly