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date: 13 May 2025

Cyril Connolly 1903–74
English writer 

  1. Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.
    Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 3
  2. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
    Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 13
  3. There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
    Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 14
  4. The Mandarin style…is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one.
    Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 20
  5. In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
    The Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1
  6. Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
    The Unquiet Grave (1944)
  7. Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
    The Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2; see Orwell
  8. We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self.
    The Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2
  9. Our memories are card-indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
    The Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 3
  10. It is the one war in which everyone changes sides.
    Tom Driberg, speech in House of Commons, 30 October 1959
  11. He could not blow his nose without moralising on the state of the handkerchief industry.
    of George Orwell
    in Sunday Times 29 September 1968