Cyril Connolly Quotes

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.

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.

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self.

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we learn to walk.

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism nor are cliches for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once a journalist has to accept the fact that his work by its very todayness is excluded from any share in tomorrow.