Cyril Connolly

“Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.”

“Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.”

“There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”

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

“Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.”

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

“Admiration is the basis of all love.”

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

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

“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”

“No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.”

“Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.”

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

“The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have not forgiven them.”

“Good writers have two things in common: they would rather write than do anything else, and they do not find it easy.”