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The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
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
Goal
Superstitions
Culture
Decay
Next
Corruption
Decadence
Every
Factors
Manure
Luxury
Epoch
Constant
Weariness
Civilization
Superstition
Becomes
Skepticism
More quotes by Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
Cyril Connolly
Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
Cyril Connolly
Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
Cyril Connolly
Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
Cyril Connolly
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
It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
Cyril Connolly
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
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.
Cyril Connolly
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.
Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
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.
Cyril Connolly
Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.
Cyril Connolly
I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
Cyril Connolly
Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.
Cyril Connolly
Sheep with a nasty side.
Cyril Connolly
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
Cyril Connolly
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
