“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.”
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Famous Cyril Connolly Quotes
“While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”
“The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.”
“The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.”
Source: Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir
“No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.”
Source: Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir
“Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.”
Source: Enemies of Promise
“When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.”
“The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.”
Source: The selected essays of Cyril Connolly
“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”
Source: Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir
“There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”
“In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.”
“Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.”
Source: Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir
“Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way.”
Source: The evening colonnade