239 Quotes by Cyril Connolly

Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.

Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river.

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.

There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.

The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living

Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.

When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow more loyal to situations and to types