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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?

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

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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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No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
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Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities it is all they have to insure their places in the world.
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From now on - specialize never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique.
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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.
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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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When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
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Sheep with a nasty side.
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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.
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A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.
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Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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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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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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That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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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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Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.
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The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
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There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
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