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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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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If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.
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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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Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems
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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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Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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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 may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.
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Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
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We fear something before we hate.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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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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Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
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As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
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Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
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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.
Cyril Connolly
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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
Cyril Connolly
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No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.
Cyril Connolly