Quotessence
Home / Authors / Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly Quotes

Critic

Filter quotes by topic

AllLiteratureWritingMenPeopleIfsArtAtheismHateMadePastTwoWellsBookCivilizationDreamLoveMayPositive AtheismSelfShould

Famous Cyril Connolly Quotes

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?”

MenFeelsYearsWellsActionPleasureConscienceGuiltMereIllPoisonOrganizedThrownFedsContemplatingRatsSeventiesRemorseGarbageLiving ThingsAccumulationIncompetentLife SpanGarbage Cans
Author:Cyril Connolly
Create image

“In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.”

MenWellsEndsEyeSchoolTogetherAmericaFormGirlWomenFriendshipGroupsFriendsCoupleAffairClubsDivorcePermanentHelplessCommitteesCousinHeartlessGirl Friend
Author:Cyril Connolly
Create image