The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
More Quotes from Cyril Connolly:
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-PrTs there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.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
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
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk
Cyril Connolly
It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator
Cyril Connolly
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Cyril Connolly
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If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.
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Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Paul Gauguin