Cyril Connolly Quotations

A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.

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

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."

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

The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.

Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.

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

Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.