Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living. Cyril Connolly (English critic and editor,… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied,… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
“A rune for the very bored: when very bored say to yourself: "It was during the next twenty minutes that there occurred… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real.… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
“He felt old and miserable, going through life trying to peddle a personality of which people would not even accept a free… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
It is a consolation of human life that the sick forget what it is like to feel well, or the miserable to… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine? — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
“Our memories are card-indexes consulted and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.” — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
“We pay for vice by the knowledge that we are wicked; we pay for pleasure when we find out too late that we are… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share
