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.
Cyril Connolly

No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
Cyril Connolly

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
Cyril Connolly

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.
Cyril Connolly

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Cyril Connolly

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
Cyril Connolly

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.
Cyril Connolly

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
Cyril Connolly

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
Cyril Connolly

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
Cyril Connolly

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Cyril Connolly

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
Cyril Connolly

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.
Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
Cyril Connolly

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

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.
Cyril Connolly

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
Cyril Connolly