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Quote by Cyril Connolly

“Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom.”

Quote by Cyril Connolly

Author

Cyril Connolly was a prominent British literary critic and writer, known for his profound insights into modern literature and culture. His works include literary criticism, novels, and essays, with his most famous works being 'The Enemies' and 'The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft'. Connolly's writing style was unique, characterized by satire and wit. more

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“Melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers but we venture out in weather that would sink them and we choose our direction.”

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Author:Cyril Connolly

“The refractory pupil of Socrates, Aristippus the Cyrene, who believed happiness to be the sum of particular pleasures and golden moments and not, as Epicurus, a prolonged intermediary state between ecstasy and pain.”

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Book:Enemies of Promise

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“It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.”

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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.”

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Book:Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas

Source: Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas

“Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.”

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Author:Cyril Connolly

“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.”

“No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.”

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Author:Cyril Connolly

“The lesson one can learn from Firbank is that of inconsequence. There is the vein which he tapped and which has not yet been fully exploited.”

Book:Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise

“And London shops on Christmas Eve Are strung with silver bells and flowers As hurrying clerks the City leave To pigeon-haunted classic towers, And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky”

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Book:Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman: An Anthology of Betjeman's Religious Verse

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“Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy, We will pardon Thy Mistake. But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be, Don't let anyone bomb me.”

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