Cyril Connolly
Journalist
1903-09-10
Quotes by Cyril Connolly
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It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say —if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry —if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
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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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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self., February 25, 1933]
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It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say —if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry —if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
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Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self., February 25, 1933]
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
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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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Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
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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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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
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Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
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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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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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In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
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Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.
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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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Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
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