Quote

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

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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
Perfect
Strung
Woman
Bends
Men
String
Like
Bows
Strings
Union
Unions
Whether
Tightens

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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
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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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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
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We fear something before we hate.
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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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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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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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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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Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
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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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When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.
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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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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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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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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
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The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
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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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