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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The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
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When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
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In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.
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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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We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny.
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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.
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We fear something before we hate.
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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.
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An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
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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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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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Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.
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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.
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We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
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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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In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
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We create the world in which we live if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility.
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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.
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