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

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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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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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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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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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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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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.
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As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
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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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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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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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When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
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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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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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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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No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.
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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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