Cyril Connolly quotes

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.

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

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

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

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.

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

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

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

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

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.