Quote

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

Cyril Connolly

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Arrives
Required
Author
Style
Language
Without
Writing
Performs
Good
Shyness

More quotes by Cyril Connolly

Image
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Cyril Connolly
Image
There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
Cyril Connolly
Image
No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.
Cyril Connolly
Image
No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
Cyril Connolly
Image
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
Cyril Connolly
Image
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
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.
Cyril Connolly
Image
It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
Cyril Connolly
Image
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
Image
In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
Cyril Connolly
Image
The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
Cyril Connolly
Image
Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.
Cyril Connolly
Image
In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
Cyril Connolly