Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The refractory pupil of Socrates, Aristippus the Cyrene, who believed happiness to be the sum of particular pleasures and golden moments and… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a… — 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
