Cyril Quotes

Another factor: Christianity offered opportunities for advancement in the church to intelligent young men, some of whom might otherwise have become mathematicians or scientists. Bishops and presbyters were generally exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, and from taxation. A bishop such as Cyril of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan could exercise considerable political power, much more than a scholar at the Museum in Alexandria or the Academy in Athens. This was something new. Under paganism religious offices had gone to men of wealth or political power, rather than wealth and power going to men of religion. For instance, Julius Caesar and his successors won the office of supreme pontiff, not as a recognition of piety or learning, but as a consequence of their political power. ~ Steven Weinberg

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say 'if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry 'if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific. ~ Cyril Connolly

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. ~ Cyril Connolly

That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center. ~ Cyril Connolly

What does it mean to write a story of your own life in your head? We all do that whether we are writers or not. We all have a story about who we are: what gender we are, what experiences we have . . . all sorts of stories and narratives we allow ourselves to believe in and create as we go along. ~ Cyril Wong

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice. ~ Cyril Connolly

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. ~ Cyril Connolly

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

Soon we were downloading ourselves
into laptops, phones or pads, freer
than we had hoped,

floating centrifugally across the Internet
to swim alongside forgotten
selfies, spam emails and porn ~ Cyril Wong

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness. ~ Cyril Connolly

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us. ~ Cyril Connolly

It was no easy task to tame the barbarians' language. One quick three-week-old autumn, the brothers were sitting in their cell, trying to write out the letters that men would later call Cyrillic. They were not getting anywhere. Fromm the cell you could clearly see half of October, and in it the silence was one hour's walk long and two hours' walk wide. Then Methodius called his brother's attention to four jugs standing on the window of their cell, but outside, on the other side of the bars. "If the doors were locked, how could I get to one of those jugs?" he asked. Constantine broke one of the jugs, then drew the fragments piece by piece through the bars and into the cell, where he reassembled the jug, bonding it with saliva and clay from the floor beneath his feet. This they now did with the Slavonic language: they broke it in pieces, drew it into their mouths through the bars of Cyril's letters, and bonded the fragments with their saliva and the Greek clay beneath the soles of their feet. ~ Milorad Pavic

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

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life. ~ Cyril Connolly

Youth is a period of missed opportunities. ~ Cyril Connolly

Art is made by the alone for the alone ... The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication ... ~ Cyril Connolly

Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm's old smithy, located a piece of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril toward it.
THIS YOU WILL READ, he said.
Cyril peered myopically at the "Cock-A Doodle-Doo" in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he'd better learn to read very, very quickly. ~ Terry Pratchett

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster. ~ Cyril Connolly

Friendships that last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from them. ~ Cyril Connolly

Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality. ~ Cyril Connolly

Someone - Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? - once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable. ~ Joseph Epstein

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

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

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

Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over ... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption. ~ Cyril Connolly

In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable. ~ Cyril Connolly

No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian. ~ Cyril Connolly

As two pieces of wax fused together make one so he who receives Holy Communion is so united with Christ that Christ is in him and he is in Christ. ~ Cyril Of Alexandria

He who receives Communion is made holy and Divinized in soul and body in the same way that water, set over a fire, becomes boiling ... Communion works like yeast that has been mixed into dough so that it leavens the whole mass; ... Just as by melting two candles together you get one piece of wax, so, I think, one who receives the Flesh and Blood of Jesus is fused together with Him by this Communion, and the soul finds that he is in Christ and Christ is in him ~ Cyril Of Alexandria

To maintain one's individuality, integrity, and true personality in the theatre is a big task. ~ Cyril Cusack

Reading the book now means that one can, if one wants, play Fantasy Literature
match writers off against each other and see who won over the long haul. Faulkner or Henry Green? I reckon the surprise champ was P.G. Wodehouse, as elegant and resourceful a prose stylist as anyone held up for our inspection here ... he has turned out to be as enduring as anyone apart from Orwell. Jokes, you see. People do like jokes.
(Hornby's thoughts after reading "Enemies of Promise" by Cyril Connolly) ~ Nick Hornby

Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end. ~ Cyril Connolly

It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing. ~ Cyril Connolly

Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising. ~ Cyril Connolly

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

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

The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe. ~ Cyril Connolly

We fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noises. ~ Cyril Connolly

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree. ~ Cyril Connolly

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered. ~ Cyril Connolly

An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication. ~ Cyril Connolly

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk. ~ Cyril Connolly

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual. ~ Cyril Connolly

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book. ~ Cyril Connolly

Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. "Move over!" I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. "Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed." Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms. Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint "oof," and kneading her claws in my leg. Cyril shoved and shoved again until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more. An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again. ~ Connie Willis

Be still,25 and know that I am God, saith the Scripture. Excuse thyself from talking many idle words: neither backbite, nor lend a willing ear to backbiters; but rather be prompt to prayer. Shew in ascetic exercise that thy heart is nerved.26 Cleanse thy vessel, that thou mayest receive grace more abundantly. For though remission of sins is given equally to all, the communion of the Holy Ghost is bestowed in proportion to each man's faith. If thou hast laboured little, thou receivest little; but if thou hast wrought much, the reward is great. Thou art running for thyself, see to thine own interest. ~ Cyril Of Jerusalem

Religion promotes the divine discontent within oneself, so that one tries to make oneself a better person and draw oneself closer to God. ~ Cyril Cusack

If the fence is strong enough I'll sit on it. ~ Cyril Smith

Beneath this mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivilous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit ridden, I let it reform. ~ Cyril Connolly

The books I haven't written are better than the books other people have. ~ Cyril Connolly

The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave. ~ Cyril Connolly

You see the clouds in the sky? I made that with Vapr! ~ Cyril Takayama

Surely we are all mad people, and they
Whom we think are, are not; ~ Cyril Tourneur

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

We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility. ~ Cyril Connolly

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality which is unendurable. ~ Cyril Connolly

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

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

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

By being silent he can do more than those who chatter. For he is in tune with the commandments as a harp is with its strings. ~ Cyril Charles Richardson

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

Is it possible to love any human being without being torn limb from limb? ~ Cyril Connolly

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon.

The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction. ~ Cyril Connolly

Try to be transparent, clear and truthful. Even when it is difficult, and above all when it is difficult. ~ Jean-Cyril Spinetta

Since, by your greatness, you
Are nearer heaven in place; be nearer it
In goodness: rich men should transcend the poor,
As clouds the earth; rais'd by the comfort of
The sun, to water dry and barren grounds. ~ Cyril Tourneur

We pay for vice by the knowledge that we are wicked; we pay for pleasure when we find out too late that we are nothing. ~ Cyril Connolly

When in doubt, choose greatness. ~ Cyril Connolly

When once we have discovered how pain and suffering diminish the personality and how joy alone increases it, then the morbid attraction which is felt for evil, pain and abnormality will have lost its power. Why do we reward our men of genius, our suicides, our madmen and the generally maladjusted with the melancholy honours of a posthumous curiosity? Because we know that it is our society which has condemned these men to death and which is guilty because, out of its own ignorance and malformation, it has persecuted those who were potential saviours; smiters of the rock who might have touched the spring of healing and brought us back into harmony with ourselves. Somehow, then, and without going mad, we must learn from these madmen to reconcile fanaticism with serenity. Either one, taken alone, is disastrous, yet except through the integration of these two opposites there can be no great art and no profound happiness--and what else is worth having? For nothing can be accomplished without fanaticism and without serenity nothing can be enjoyed. ~ Cyril Connolly

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

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

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933] ~ Cyril Connolly

Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook. ~ Michael Dirda

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. ~ Cyril Connolly

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air. ~ Cyril Connolly

English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid; one attractive, one vulgar; one noble, one ape-like; one serious and sincere, one undignified and false; one far-sighted, one short; EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter. ~ Cyril Connolly

Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style, - which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity ~ Cyril Connolly

Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence. ~ Cyril Connolly

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

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth. ~ Cyril Connolly

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? ~ Cyril Connolly

There is a way of leaving and yet of not leaving; of hinting that one loves and is willing to return, yet never coming back and so preserving a relationship in a lingering decay. ~ Cyril Connolly

The actor has a constant problem of personal identity. ~ Cyril Cusack

frThe Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance. He is not felt as a burden for God is light, very light. Rays of light and knowledge stream before him as the Spirit approaches. The Spirit comes with the tenderness of a true friend to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console. ~ Cyril Of Jerusalem

Flaubert spoke true: to succeed a great artist must have both character and fanaticism and few in this country are willing to pay the price. Our writers have either no personality and therefore no style or a false personality and therefore a bad style; they mistake prejudice for energy and accept the sensation of material well-being as a system of thought. ~ Cyril Connolly

When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good. ~ Cyril Tourneur

Like many lazy people, once I started work I could not stop; perhaps that is why we avoid it. ~ Cyril Connolly

Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy. ~ 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. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having drawn the conclusion, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, and will not acknowledge that they are prevented by their present way of life from ever creating anything different. ~ Cyril Connolly

If there is any emergence of a fourth party in British politics, it is the task of the Liberal Party to strangle it at birth. ~ Cyril Smith

The artist secretes nostalgia around life. ~ Cyril Connolly

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. ~ Cyril Connolly

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time. ~ Cyril Connolly

Acting is the most brotherly and sisterly profession in the world. ~ Cyril Cusack

Streets of Paris, pray for me; beaches in the sun, pray for me; ghosts of the lemurs, intercede for me; plane-tree and laurel-rose, shade me; summer rain on quays of Toulon, wash me away. ~ Cyril Connolly

In my younger years my dedication may have expressed itself egotistically. ~ Cyril Cusack

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: "The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon." No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that "words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living." That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again. ~ Nina Sankovitch

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion. ~ Cyril Connolly

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. ~ Cyril Connolly

There is no suicide for which all society is not responsible. ~ Cyril Connolly