Quotes from Cyril Connolly

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.

The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God.

In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

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

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

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality which is unendurable.

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius.

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.

There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.

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

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