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… — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run… — 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 Image
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 Image
We cannot be happy until we can love ourselves without egotism and our friends without tyranny. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine? — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.” — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
“Our memories are card-indexes consulted and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.” — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence. — Cyril Connolly Copy Share Image
