Cyril Connolly

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.

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

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.

In the sex-war thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said we have still to admit with Byron that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty deceit and revenge is set alight it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.

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

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.

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

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

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

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we learn to walk.

A writer who takes up journalism abandons the slow tempo of literature for a faster one and the change will do him harm. By degrees the flippancy of journalism will become a habit and the pleasure of being paid on the nail and more especially of being praised on the nail grow indispensable.

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.

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

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

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate it a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.

Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.