Cyril Connolly quotes

Cyril Connolly was an English literary critic, essayist, and writer renowned for his influential works on literature and culture. His journal "Horizon" became a key platform for writers during World War II. He is remembered for his wit, critical insight, and the enduring impact of his essays and memoirs. Here are 113 of his quotes:

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk.

Cyril Connolly

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

Cyril Connolly

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.

Cyril Connolly

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

Cyril Connolly

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Cyril Connolly

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

Cyril Connolly

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

Cyril Connolly

Youth is a period of missed opportunities.

Cyril Connolly

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Cyril Connolly

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

Cyril Connolly

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.

Cyril Connolly

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.

Cyril Connolly

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

Cyril Connolly

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

Cyril Connolly

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Cyril Connolly

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.

Cyril Connolly

Everything is a dangerous drug to me except reality, which is unendurable.

Cyril Connolly

The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.

Cyril Connolly

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Cyril Connolly

No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.

Cyril Connolly

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.

Cyril Connolly