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

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No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
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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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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
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A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.
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The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.
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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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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 fear something before we hate.
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Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.
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It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.
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The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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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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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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There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.
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When in doubt, choose greatness.
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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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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What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
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