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Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Books

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“When once we have discovered how pain and suffering diminish the personality and how joy alone increases it, then the morbid attraction which is felt for evil, pain and abnormality will have lost its power. Why do we reward our men of genius, our suicides, our madmen and the generally maladjusted with the melancholy honours of a posthumous curiosity? Because we know that it is our society which has condemned these men to death and which is guilty because, out of its own ignorance and malformation, it has persecuted those who were potential saviours; smiters of the rock who might have touched the spring of healing and brought us back into harmony with ourselves. Somehow, then, and without going mad, we must learn from these madmen to reconcile fanaticism with serenity. Either one, taken alone, is disastrous, yet except through the integration of these two opposites there can be no great art and no profound happiness--and what else is worth having? For nothing can be accomplished without fanaticism and without serenity nothing can be enjoyed.”

SufferingSuicideLegacy
Book:The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus
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“Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.”

IfsWritingYearsYoungThreeActingArmsPeriodsPromiseWeightVictimSevenSettlingMatureJudgedPlatformsUnfortunateRopeSeven YearsYoung WritersHangmanNooses
Book:Enemies of Promise
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“Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.”

PeopleWorldHandsAppreciationDragCharmingDependenceRuthlessAmiableAppreciation Of Others
Book:Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas
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“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 therefore a bad style; they mistake prejudice for energy and accept the sensation of material well-being as a system of thought.”

WellsCountryCharacterArtistEnergyPayMistakeAcceptingStyleWillingMaterialsPersonalitySucceedPrejudiceWell BeingSpokesSensationsGreat ArtFanaticismGreat ArtistPay The Price
Author:Cyril Connolly
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“There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating... Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.”

IfsMenMayChildrenPersonsDreamHateLibertyPlansElementsConsequenceCeaseIncomeNoiseVanityPrivacyPopularityOur DreamsDividendsLurkingNo Hate
Author:Cyril Connolly
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“In the sex-war, thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated, but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said, we have still to admit, with Byron, that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted, more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty, deceit and revenge is set alight, it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.”

MenLongHas BeensSaidStillsWarDesireSexWomenEmotionWeaponsFemaleMalesRevengeCrueltyDeceitSincereDevotedUnkindUnselfishKind WordsFuseByronThoughtlessnessVindictivenessUnkind Words
Author:Cyril Connolly
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“If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.”

IfsMenMaySeemsLastsLyingNightHoursMorningStudyRichSittingWarmAwakeProsePrimeApprehensionPascalPrime Of Life
Book:The Condemned Playground
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“In the dream of approaching forty I saw myself as about to die and realized that I was no longer myself, but a creature inhabited entirely by parasites, as a caterpillar is occupied by the grubs of the ichneumon fly. Gin, whisky, sloth, fear, guilt, tobacco, had made themselves my inquilines; alcohol sloshed about within, while tendrils of melon and vine grew out of ears and nostrils; my mind was a worn gramophone record, my true self was such a ruin as to seem non-existent, and all this had happened in the last three years.”

YearsMindMadeSelfDreamSeemsLastsDiesThreeRecordsSawsHappenedGrewCreaturesEarsGuiltAlcoholRuinsFortyThree YearsWornTrue SelfTobaccoVinesSlothParasitesGinCaterpillarsWhiskyMelons
Author:Cyril Connolly
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