Cyril Connolly Quotes About Literature
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Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
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Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
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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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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
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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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Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
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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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The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
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As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
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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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While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.
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We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.
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All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
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Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
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Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.
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The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
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Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way.
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The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
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There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
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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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In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
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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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The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
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