239 Quotes by Cyril Connolly

No opinions, no ideas, no real knowledge of anything, no ideals, no inspiration; a fat, slothful, querulous, greedy, impotent carcass; a stump, a decaying belly washed up on the shore... Always tired, always bored, always hurt, always hating.

Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems.

No taste is so acquired as that for someone else’s quality of mind.

The true index of a man’s character is the health of his wife.

Hate is crystallized fear, fear’s dividend, fear objectified. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.

A love affair is a grafting operation. “What has once been joined never forgets”. There is a moment when the graft takes; up to then it is possible without difficulty the separation which afterwards comes only through breaking off a great hunk of oneself; the ingrown fibre of hours, days, years.

From now on – specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique.

I am now forced to admit that anxiety is my true condition, occasionally intruded on by work, pleasure, melancholy or despair.

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. “Yes,” he replied, “there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters – to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.”