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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.

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
Lasts
Last
Wells
Orpheus
Firsts
Beholds
Well
Turning
First
Miserable
Time
Lose
Loses

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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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Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
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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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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.
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
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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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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.
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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
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There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.
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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
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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?
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
Cyril Connolly
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Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.
Cyril Connolly
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
Cyril Connolly
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Sheep with a nasty side.
Cyril Connolly
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A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
Cyril Connolly
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
Cyril Connolly