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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.

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
Serve
Despair
Creative
Purpose
Ceases
Even
Justified
Surely
Suicide
Cease

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There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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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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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
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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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Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
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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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Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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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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The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
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It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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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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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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Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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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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