Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control. Cyril Connolly More Quotes by Cyril Connolly More Quotes From Cyril Connolly Flaubert spoke true: to succeed a great artist must have both character and fanaticism and few in this country are willing to pay the price. Our writers have either no personality and therefore no style or a false personality and therefore a bad style; they mistake prejudice for energy and accept the sensation of material well-being as a system of thought. Cyril Connolly mistakecharactercountry In the dream of approaching forty I saw myself as about to die and realized that I was no longer myself, but a creature inhabited entirely by parasites, as a caterpillar is occupied by the grubs of the ichneumon fly. Gin, whisky, sloth, fear, guilt, tobacco, had made themselves my inquilines; alcohol sloshed about within, while tendrils of melon and vine grew out of ears and nostrils; my mind was a worn gramophone record, my true self was such a ruin as to seem non-existent, and all this had happened in the last three years. Cyril Connolly selfdreamyears Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness. Cyril Connolly passionignorancedarkness The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven. Cyril Connolly atheismliteraturecivilization The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea of its richness and meaning. Cyril Connolly gainsnatureideas The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted. Cyril Connolly novelistsstorieswriting The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest. Cyril Connolly communicationsurvivalsociety 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. Cyril Connolly pastyearstravel He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry. Cyril Connolly blownosesart An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication. Cyril Connolly publicityscandalmovement There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover. Cyril Connolly womenwifelovers 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. Cyril Connolly beautifulbeautyfunny We fear something before we hate. Cyril Connolly anticipationhate Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth. Cyril Connolly technologyartistscience That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center. Cyril Connolly economicnew-yorkmen In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude. Cyril Connolly cousingirlfriendship A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. Cyril Connolly mistakerealityinteresting The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back. Cyril Connolly geniusbeachart Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree. Cyril Connolly epitaphgreentree The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. Cyril Connolly decadencenextcivilization
