Cyril Connolly Quotes

It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.

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

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Happiness is in the imagination. What we perform is always inferior to what we imagine.

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

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

When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.

La cultura europea ha sido muy fértil en la invención de infiernos.

Our memories are card-indexes consulted and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Thus tea, coffee, alcohol stimulate.
So do heights, wet days, south-west gales, hotel bedrooms in Paris and windows overlooking harbours. Also snow, frost, the electric bell outside a cinema at night, sex-life and fever.

There was once a man (reputed to be the wisest in the world) who, although living to an untold age, confined his teaching to the one word of advice: ‘Endure!’ At length a rival arose and challenged him to a debate which took place before a large assembly. ‘You say “Endure”,’ cried the rival sage, ‘but I don’t
want to endure. I wish to love and to be loved, to conquer and create, I wish to know what is right, then do it and be happy.’ There was no reply from his opponent, and, on looking more closely at the old creature, his adversary found him to consist
of an odd-shaped rock on which had taken root a battered thorn that presented, by an optical illusion, the impression of hair and a beard. Trimnphantly he pointed out the mistake to the authorities, but they were not concerned. ‘Man or rock,’ they answered, ‘what does it matter?’ And at that moment the wind,
reverberating through the sage’s moss-grown orifice, repeated with a hollow sound: ‘Endure!

La Conspiración Vegetal: El Hombre está ahora en guardia ante los insectos parasitarios; ante tenias, termitas, escarabajos, pero ¿ha prestado alguna atención a la posibilidad de que haya sido elegido como objetivo del ataque vegetal, señalado por la viña, el lúpulo, el enebro, la planta del tabaco, la hoja de té y el grano de café para ser destruido?