Cyril Connolly

“Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.”

“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.”

“A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.”

“The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.”

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

“Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.”

“The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.”

“Youth is a period of missed opportunities.”

“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.”

“For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?”

“It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.”

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”