Background Image
...
An Author Arrives At A Good Style When His Language Performs What Is Required Of It Without Shyness.
-Cyril Connolly
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

An Author Arrives At

Cyril Connolly
...
An Author Arrives At A Good Style When His Language Performs What Is Required Of It Without Shyness.

Understanding the Quote: "an author arrives at a good style when his language performs what..."

This quote by Cyril Connolly reflects deeply on the theme of writing. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Writing, Style, Language, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Cyril Connolly interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly is celebrated for insightful thoughts on writing and style. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 36107
Topic
Writing
Style
Language
More From Cyril Connolly
The More I See Of Life The More I Perceive That Only Through Solitary Communion With Nature Can One Gain An Idea Of Its Richness And Meaning.
Nature
Ideas
Gains
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.
Unique
Ninety Nine
Advice
We May Assume That We Keep People Waiting Symbolically Because We Do Not Wish To See Them And That Our Anxiety Is Due Not To Being Late, But To Having To See Them At All.
People
Waiting
Anxiety
Today The Function Of The Artist Is To Bring Imagination To Science And Science To Imagination, Where They Meet, In The Myth.
Science
Artist
Technology
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.
Dream
Waste
Understood
The Friendships Which Last Are Those Wherein Each Friend Respects The Other's Dignity To The Point Of Not Really Wanting Anything From Him.
Friendship
Respect
Lasts
There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another. This Should Be Made Clear To All Who Contemplate Such A Union. The Avoidance Of This Pain Is The Beginning Of Wisdom, For It Is Strong Enough To Contaminate The Rest Of Our Lives.
Love
Strong
Pain
The River Of Truth Is Always Splitting Up Into Arms That Reunite. Islanded Between Them, The Inhabitants Argue For A Lifetime As To Which Is The Mainstream.
Truth
Rivers
Arms
There Is No More Sombre Enemy Of Good Art Than The Pram In The Hall.
Art
Enemy
Atheism
It Is A Consolation Of Human Life That The Sick Forget What It Is Like To Feel Well, Or The Miserable To Be Happy.
Sick
Misery
Forget
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.
Art
Fall
Dark
There Is No Suicide For Which All Society Is Not Responsible.
Suicide
Responsible
If Our Elaborate And Dominating Bodies Are Given Us To Be Denied At Every Turn, If Our Nature Is Always Wrong And Wicked, How Ineffectual We Are; Like Fishes Not Meant To Swim.
Swim
Wicked
Atheism
The Headmistress Was An Able Instructress In French And History And We Learned With Her As Fast As Fear Could Teach Us.
Able
Teach
Headmistress
The True Work Of Art Is The One Which The Seventh Wave Of Genius Throws Up The Beach Where The Undertow Of Time Cannot Drag It Back.
Beach
Art
Genius
As Repressed Sadists Are Supposed To Become Policemen Or Butchers So Those With An Irrational Fear Of Life Become Publishers.
Life
Fear
Publishing Books
Obesity Is A Mental State, A Disease Brought On By Boredom And Disappointment.
Motivational
Disappointment
Loss
No-one Was Ever Made Wretched In A Brothel.
Made
Brothels
Wretched
The One Way To Get Thin Is To Re-establish A Purpose In Life.
Food
Loss
Purpose
A Writer Is In Danger Of Allowing His Talent To Dull Who Lets More Than A Year Go Past Without Finding Himself In His Rightful Place Of Composition, The Small Single Unluxurious Retreat Of The Twentieth Century, The Hotel Bedroom.
Travel
Past
Years
In A Perfect Union The Man And Woman Are Like A Strung Bow. Who Is To Say Whether The String Bends The Bow, Or The Bow Tightens The String?
Men
Perfect
Unions
The True Index Of A Man's Character Is The Health Of His Wife.
Marriage
Inspiration
Health
Imprisoned In Every Fat Man A Thin One Is Wildly Signalling To Be Let Out.
Men
Literature
Fats
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.
Believe
Beer
Over You
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.
Beach
Children
Home
Literature Is The Art Of Writing Something That Will Be Read Twice; Journalism What Will Be Grasped At Once.
Art
Writing
Literature
In The Dream Of Approaching Forty I Saw Myself As About To Die And Realized That I Was No Longer Myself, But A Creature Inhabited Entirely By Parasites, As A Caterpillar Is Occupied By The Grubs Of The Ichneumon Fly. Gin, Whisky, Sloth, Fear, Guilt, Tobacco, Had Made Themselves My Inquilines; Alcohol Sloshed About Within, While Tendrils Of Melon And Vine Grew Out Of Ears And Nostrils; My Mind Was A Worn Gramophone Record, My True Self Was Such A Ruin As To Seem Non-existent, And All This Had Happened In The Last Three Years.
Dream
Years
Self
Youth Is A Period Of Missed Opportunities.
Opportunity
Youth
Missed Opportunity
Happiness Lies In The Fulfillment Of The Spirit Through The Body.
Lying
Body
Spirit
Poets Arguing About Modern Poetry: Jackals Snarling Over A Dried-up Well.
Arguing
Poet
Modern
Optimism And Self-pity Are The Positive And Negative Poles Of Modern Cowardice.
Inspirational
Self
Optimism
All Charming People Have Something To Conceal, Usually Their Total Dependence On The Appreciation Of Others.
Appreciation
People
Ego
There Cannot Be A Personal God Without A Pessimistic Religion. As Soon As There Is A Personal God He Is A Disappointing God.
God
Atheism
Pessimistic
We Are All Serving A Life Sentence In The Dungeon Of The Self.
Self
Jail
Dungeons
No Education Is Worth Having That Does Not Teach The Lesson Of Concentration On A Task, However Unattractive. These Lessons, If Not Learnt Early, Will Be Learnt, If At All, With Pain And Grief In Later Life.
Pain
Grief
Doe
The Books I Haven't Written Are Better Than The Books Other People Have.
Work
Book
Writing
We Must Select The Illusion Which Appeals To Our Temperament, And Embrace It With Passion, If We Want To Be Happy.
Happiness
Passion
Justice
There Are Only Three Things Which Make Life Worth Living: To Be Writing A Tolerably Good Book, To Be In A Dinner Party Of Six, And To Be Traveling South With Someone Whom Your Conscience Permits You To Love.
Party
Book
Writing
The Secret Of Success Is To Be In Harmony With Existence, To Be Always Calm To Let Each Wave Of Life Wash Us A Little Farther Up The Shore.
Life
Success
Secret
We Fear Something Before We Hate.
Hate
Anticipation
Better To Write For Yourself And Have No Public, Than To Write For The Public And Have No Self.
Inspirational
Respect
Clever
The Reward Of Art Is Not Fame Or Success But Intoxication.
Life
Beautiful
Art
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?
Men
Years
Garbage Cans
There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another... It Is When We Begin To Hurt Those Whom We Love That The Guilt With Which We Are Born Becomes Intolerable, And Since All Those Whom We Love Intensely And Continuously Grow Part Of Us, And Since We Hate Ourselves In Them, So We Torture Ourselves And Them Together.
Hurt
Pain
Hate
What Grape To Keep Its Place In The Sun, Taught Our Ancestors To Make Wine?
Wine
Sun
Taught
Classical And Romantic: Private Language Of A Family Quarrel, A Dead Dispute Over The Distribution Of Emphasis Between Man And Nature.
Nature
Men
Literature
Beneath A Mask Of Selfish Tranquility Nothing Exists Except Bitterness And Boredom.
Selfish
Boredom
Bitterness
Purity Engenders Wisdom, Passion Avarice, And Ignorance Folly, Infatuation And Darkness.
Passion
Ignorance
Darkness
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.
Scandal
Publicity
Movement
Marriage Is The Permanent Conversation Between Two People Who Talk Over Everything And Everyone Until Death Breaks The Record.
Marriage
Two
People
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.
Sex
Revenge
War
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.
Eye
Facts
Tomorrow
In The Sex War, Thoughtlessness Is The Weapon Of The Male, Vindictiveness Of The Female.
Cheating
Sex
War
No City Should Be Too Large For A Man To Walk Out Of In A Morning.
Morning
Men
Fog
A Stone Lies In A River; A Piece Of Wood Is Jammed Against It; Dead Leaves, Drifting Logs, And Branches Caked With Mud Collect; Weeds Settle There, And Soon Birds Have Made A Nest And Are Feeding Their Young Among The Blossoming Water Plants. Then The River Rises And The Earth Is Washed Away. The Birds Depart, The Flowers Wither, The Branches Are Dislodged And Drift Downward; No Trace Is Left Of The Floating Island But A Stone Submerged By The Water; - Such Is Our Personality.
Weed
Lying
Flower
The English Masses Are Lovable: They Are Kind, Decent, Tolerant, Practical And Not Stupid. The Tragedy Is That They Are Too Many Of Them, And That They Are Aimless, Having Outgrown The Servile Functions For Which They Were Encouraged To Multiply. One Day These Huge Crowds Will Have To Seize Power Because There Will Be Nothing Else For Them To Do, And Yet They Neither Demand Power Nor Are Ready To Make Use Of It; They Will Learn Only To Be Bored In A New Way.
Stupid
Power
Bored
Hate Is Crystallized Fear, Fear's Dividend, Fear Objectivized. We Hate What We Fear And So Where Hate Is, Fear Will Be Lurking.
Hate
Hatred
Dividends
Our Memories Are Card Indexes Consulted And Then Returned In Disorder By Authorities Whom We Do Not Control.
Memories
Cards
Literature
Most Of The Beauty Of Women Evaporates When They Achieve Domestic Happiness At The Price Of Their Independence.
Marriage
Independence
Achieve
The Worst Vice Of The Solitary Is The Worship Of His Food.
Food
Solitude
Vices
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.
Running
Taken
Air
Like Those Crabs Which Dress Themselves With Seaweed, We Wear Belief And Custom.
Dresses
Belief
Crabs
In My Religion, There Would Be No Exclusive Doctrine; All Would Be Love, Poetry, And Doubt.
Love
Doubt
Doctrine
Peace ... Is A Morbid Condition, Due To A Surplus Of Civilians, Which War Seeks To Remedy.
Peace
War
Morbid
A Life Based On Reason Will Always Require To Be Balanced By An Occasional Bout Of Violent And Irrational Emotion, For Instinctual Drives Must Be Satisfied
Emotion
Reason
Violent
Vulgarity Is The Garlic In The Salad Of Charm.
Vulgarity Is
Literature
Salad
Melancholy And Remorse Form The Deep Leaden Keel Which Enables Us To Sail Into The Wind Of Reality; We Run Aground Sooner Than The Flat-bottomed Pleasure-lovers But We Venture Out In Weather That Would Sink Them And We Choose Our Direction.
Running
Reality
Wind
The Expulsion From Eden Is An Act Of Vindictive Womanish Spite; The Fall Of Man, As Recounted In The Bible, Comes Nearer To The Fall Of God.
Fall
Men
Eden
Life Is A Maze In Which We Take The Wrong Turning Before We Have Learned To Walk.
Life
Mazes
Walks
There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another.
Pain
Bad Relationship
Two
The Civilized Are Those Who Get More Out Of Life Than The Uncivilized, And For This We Are Not Likely To Be Forgiven.
Civilization
Atheism
Literature
If One Is Too Lazy To Think, Too Vain To Do A Thing Badly, Too Cowardly To Admit It, One Will Never Attain Wisdom.
Wisdom
Thinking
Lazy
It Is After Creation, In The Elation Of Success, Or The Gloom Of Failure, That Love Becomes Essential.
Love Is
Essentials
Elation
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.
Country
Mistake
Character
We Cannot Be Happy Until We Can Love Ourselves Without Egotism And Our Friends Without Tyranny.
Happiness
Tyranny
Egotism
In Youth The Life Of Reason Is Not In Itself Sufficient; Afterwards The Life Of Emotion, Except For Short Periods, Becomes Unbearable.
Emotional
Feelings
Unbearable
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.
Stupid
Intelligent
Law
The English Language Is Like A Broad River On Whose Bank A Few Patient Anglers Are Sitting, While, Higher Up, The Stream Is Being Polluted By A String Of Refuse-barges Tipping Out Their Muck.
Rivers
Sitting
Tipping
A Lazy Person, Whatever The Talents With Which He Set Out, Will Have Condemned Himself To Second-hand Thoughts And To Second-rate Friends.
Hands
Lazy
Laziness
If Montaigne Is A Man In The Prime Of Life Sitting In His Study On A Warm Morning And Putting Down The Sum Of His Experience In His Rich, Sinewy Prose, Then Pascal Is That Same Man Lying Awake In The Small Hours Of The Night When Death Seems Very Close And Every Thought Is Heightened By The Apprehension That It May Be His Last.
Morning
Lying
Night
There Is No Fury Like An Ex-wife Searching For A New Lover.
Women
Wife
Lovers
A Great Writer Created 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.
Writing
Watches
World
We Create The World In Which We Live; If That World Becomes Unfit For Human Life, It Is Because We Tire Of Our Responsibility.
Responsibility
World
Tire
The Detective Story Itself Is In A Dilemma. It Is A Vein Which Is In Danger Of Being Worked Out, The Demand Is Constant, The Powers Of Supply Variable, And The Reader, With Each One He Absorbs, Grows A Little More Sophisticated And Harder To Please, While The Novelist, After Each One He Writes, Becomes A Little More Exhausted.
Writing
Novelists
Stories
Hemingway Is Great In That Alone Of Living Writers He Has Saturated His Work With The Memory Of Physical Pleasure, With Sunshine And Salt Water, With Food, Wine And Making Love And The Remorse Which Is The Shadow Of That Sun.
Memories
Wine
Sunshine
Only By Avoiding The Beginning Of Things Can We Escape Their End.
Ends
Avoiding
A Woman's Desire For Revenge Outlasts All Her Other Emotions.
Cheating
Revenge
Women
In My Religion All Believers Would Stop Work At Sundown And Have A Drink Together.
Together
Drink
Believer
Promise Is The Capacity For Letting People Down.
People
Promise
Capacity
The Artist Is A Member Of The Leisured Classes Who Cannot Pay For His Leisure.
Art
Class
Leisure
Sheep With A Nasty Side.
Sheep
Insulting
Sides
Miserable Orpheus Who, Turning To Lose His Eurydice, Beholds Her For The First Time As Well As The Last.
Lasts
Firsts
Miserable
The True Function Of A Writer Is To Produce A Masterpiece And No Other Task Is Of Any Consequence.
Tasks
Literature
Produce
Failure On The Other Hand Is Infectious. The World Is Full Of Charming Failures (for All Charming People Have Something To Conceal, Usually Their Total Dependence On The Appreciation Of Others) And Unless The Writer Is Quite Ruthless With These Amiable Footlers, They Will Drag Him Down With Them.
Appreciation
Hands
People
No One Can Achieve Serenity Until The Glare Of Passion Is Past The Meridian.
Passion
Past
Serenity
Most People Do Not Believe In Anything Very Much And Our Greatest Poetry Is Given To Us By Those Who Do.
Believe
People
Given
Beautiful Women Must Think About Their Beauty As Capitalists Think About Their Investments Or Politicians About Their Majorities; It Is All They Have To Insure Their Places In The World.
Funny
Beauty
Beautiful
When We Have Ceased To Love The Stench Of The Human Animal, Either In Others Or In Ourselves, Then Are We Condemned To Misery, And Clear Thinking Can Begin.
Animal
Thinking
Literature
In America Every Woman Has Her Set Of Girl-friends; Some Are Cousins, The Rest Are Gained At School. These Form A Permanent Committee Who Sit On Each Other's Affairs, Who Come Out Together, Marry And Divorce Together, And Who End As Those Groups Of Bustling, Heartless Well-informed Club-women Who Govern Society. Against Them The Couple Of Ehepaar Is Helpless And Man In Their Eyes But A Biological Interlude.
Friendship
Girl
Cousin
There Is No Hate Without Fear. Hate Is Crystallized Fear, Fear's Dividend, Fear Objectivized. We Hate What We Fear And So Where Hate Is, Fear Is Lurking. Thus We Hate What Threatens Our Person, Our Liberty, Our Privacy, Our Income, Our Popularity, Our Vanity And Our Dreams And Plans For Ourselves. If We Can Isolate This Element In What We Hate We May Be Able To Cease From Hating... Hate Is The Consequence Of Fear; We Fear Something Before We Hate; A Child Who Fears Noises Becomes The Man Who Hates Them.
Dream
Children
Hate
The Goal Of Every Culture Is To Decay Through Over-civilization; The Factors Of Decadence, -- Luxury, Skepticism, Weariness And Superstition, -- Are Constant. The Civilization Of One Epoch Becomes The Manure Of The Next.
Civilization
Luxury
Goal
An Author Arrives At A Good Style When His Language Performs What Is Required Of It Without Shyness.
Writing
Style
Language
For What Is Liberty But The Unhampered Translation Of Will Into Act?
Freedom
Liberty
Action
When Young We Are Faithful To Individuals, When Older We Grow Loyal To Situations And To Types.
Faithful
Literature
Loyal
Fallen Leaves Lying On The Grass In The November Sun Bring More Happiness Than The Daffodils.
Lying
Autumn
Sun
The Refractory Pupil Of Socrates, Aristippus The Cyrene, Who Believed Happiness To Be The Sum Of Particular Pleasures And Golden Moments And Not, As Epicurus, A Prolonged Intermediary State Between Ecstasy And Pain.
Pain
Golden Moments
Pleasure
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.
Christian
Atheism
Poison
Young Writers If They Are To Mature Require A Period Of Between Three And Seven Years In Which To Live Down Their Promise. Promise Is Like The Mediaeval Hangman Who After Settling The Noose, Pushed His Victim Off The Platform And Jumped On His Back, His Weight Acting A Drop While His Jockeying Arms Prevented The Unfortunate From Loosening The Rope. When He Judged Him Dead He Dropped To The Ground.
Writing
Years
Promise
The Past Is The Only Dead Thing That Smells Sweet.
Sweet
Past
Smell
That Sinister Stonehenge Of Economic Man, Rockefeller Center.
New York
Men
Economic
The Only Way For Writers To Meet Is To Share A Quick Peek Over A Common Lamp-post.
Peeking
Lamps
Way
When I Write After Dark The Shades Of Evening Scatter Their Purple Through My Prose.
Writing
Dark
Purple
How Many Books Did Renoir Write On How To Paint?
Book
Writing
Paint
Like The Bee Its Sting, The Promiscuous Leave Behind Them In Each Encounter Something Of Themselves By Which They Are Made To Suffer.
Dating
Suffering
Encounters
Everyone Has The Right To Express An Opinion. No One Has The Right To Be Listened To.
Opinion
Boys Do Not Grow Up Gradually. They Move Forward In Spurts Like The Hands Of Clocks In Railway Stations.
Growing Up
Moving
Son
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.
Stupid
Intelligent
Thinking
Imagination Is Nostalgia For The Past, The Absent It Is The Liquid Solution In Which Art Develops The Snapshot Of Reality.
Art
Past
Reality
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 Encountered. Proust In Venice, Matisse's Birdcages Overlooking The Flower Market At Nice, Gide On The Seventeenth-century Quais Of Toulon, Lorca In Granada, Picasso By Saint-germain-des-prés: There Lies Civilization And For Me It Can Exist Only Under Those Liberal Regimes In Which The Present Is Alive And Therefore Capable Of Assimilating The Past.
Country
Nice
Lying
The Lesson One Can Learn From Firbank Is That Of Inconsequence. There Is The Vein Which He Tapped And Which Has Not Yet Been Fully Exploited.
Veins
Lessons
No Taste Is So Acquired As That For Someone Else's Quality Of Mind.
Mind
Quality
Literature
The Civilization Of One Epoch Becomes The Manure Of The Next.
Civilization
Next
Decadence
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.
Mistake
Literature
Matter
Civilization Is Maintained By A Very Few People In A Small Number Of Places And We Need Only Some Bombs And A Few Prisons To Blot It Out Altogether.
Small Numbers
Civilization
People
Industrial Society Seems Likely To Be Entering A Period Of Severe Stress, Due In Part To Problems Of Human Behavior And In Part To Economic And Environmental Problems
Stress
Environmental
Entering
Longevity Is The Revenge Of Talent Upon Genius.
Revenge
Intelligence
Intellectual
The American Language Is In A State Of Flux Based Upon Survival Of The Unfittest.
Communication
Survival
Society
Greed, Like The Love Of Comfort, Is A Kind Of Fear.
Love
Greed
Comfort
Doing Is Overrated, And Success Undesirable, But The Bitterness Of Failure Even More So.
Failure
Bitterness
Overrated
Green Leaves On A Dead Tree Is Our Epitaph-green Leaves, Dear Reader, On A Dead Tree.
Tree
Green
Epitaph
When In Doubt, Choose Greatness.
Greatness
Doubt
When In Doubt
A Mutually Fulfilled Sexual Union Between Two People Is The Rarest Sensation Which Life Can Provide. But It Is Not Quite Real. It Stops When The Telephone Rings. Such A Passion Can Be Kept At Its Early Strength Only By Adding To It Either More And More Unhappiness (jealousy, Separation, Doubt, Renunciation), Or More And More Artificiality (drink, Technique, Stage-illusions). Whoever Has Missed This Has Never Lived, Who Lives For It Alone Is But Partly Alive.
Real
Passion
Two
Hate Is The Consequence Of Fear; We Fear Something Before We Hate; A Child Who Fears Noises Becomes The Man Who Hates Them.
Children
Fear
Hate
A Mistake Which Is Commonly Made About Neurotics Is To Suppose That They Are Interesting. It Is Not Interesting To Be Always Unhappy, Engrossed With Oneself, Malignant And Ungrateful, And Never Quite In Touch With Reality.
Mistake
Reality
Interesting
While Thoughts Exist, Words Are Alive And Literature Becomes An Escape, Not From, But Into Living.
Alive
Literature
Dining Out Is A Vice, A Dissipation Of Spirit Punished By Remorse. We Eat, Drink, And Talk A Little Too Much, Abuse All Our Friends, Belch Out Our Literary Preferences And Are Egged On By Accomplices In The Audience To Acts Of Mental Exhibitionism. Such Evenings Cannot Fail To Diminish Those Who Take Part In Them. They End On Monkey Hill.
Food
Cooking
Abuse
I Review Novels To Make Money, Because It Is Easier For A Sluggard To Write An Article A Fortnight Than A Book A Year, Because The Writer Is Soothed By The Opiate Of Action, The Crank By Posing As A Good Journalist, And Having An Air Hole. I Dislike It. I Do It And I Am Always Resolving To Give It Up.
Book
Writing
Air
Like Water, We Are Truest To Our Nature In Repose.
Water
Tranquility
Repose
Believing In Hell Must Distort Every Judgement On This Life.
Believe
Judgement
Atheism
Melancholy And Remorse Forms The Deep Leaden Keel Which Enables Us To Sail Into The Wind Of Reality.
Sadness
Reality
Wind
Whom The Gods Wish To Destroy They First Call Promising.
Sarcastic
Sarcasm
Intelligence
There Are Many Who Dare Not Kill Themselves For Fear Of What The Neighbours Will Say.
Funny
Death
Suicide
M Is For Marx And Clashing Of Classes And Movement Of Masses And Massing Of Asses.
Class
Movement
Ass
Beneath A Mask Of Selfish Tranquility Nothing Exists Except Bitterness And Boredom. I Am One Of Those Whom Suffering Has Made Empty And Frivolous: Each Night In My Dreams I Pull The Scab Off A Wound; Each Day, Vacuous And Habit-ridden, I Help It Re-form.
Dream
Selfish
Night
Except For Poverty, Incompatibility, Opposition Of Parents, Absence Of Love On One Side And Of Desire To Marry On Both, Nothing Stands In The Way Of Our Happy Union.
Love
Marriage
Parent
Two Weeks Before His Death, A Friend Asked Him Half Jokingly If He Had Discovered Any Meaning In Life. "yes," He Replied, "there Is A Meaning; At Least, For Me, There Is One Thing That Matters - To Set A Chime Of Words Tinkling In The Minds Of A Few Fastidious People."
Two
People
Mind
We Love But Once, For Once Only Are We Perfectly Equipped For Loving.
Love
The Dread Of Loneliness Is Greater Than The Fear Of Bondage, So We Get Married.
Love
Dream
Lonely
When Even Despair Ceases To Serve Any Creative Purpose, Then Surely We Are Justified In Suicide.
Suicide
Creative
Despair
The Artist Secretes Nostalgia Around Life.
Artist
Nostalgia
The Greatest Problem With Women Is How To Contrive That They Should Seem Our Equals
Problem
Should
Seems
Nothing Dates Like Hate And In Literature A Little Of It Goes A Very Long Way.
Hate
Long
Literature
It Is Only In The Country That We Can Get To Know A Person Or A Book.
Country
Nature
Book
The Man Who Is Master Of His Passions Is Reason's Slave.
Passion
Men
Slave
He [george Orwell] Would Not Blow His Nose Without Moralising On Conditions In The Handkerchief Industry.
Art
Blow
Noses
It Is The Fear Of Middle-age In The Young, Of Old-age In The Middle-aged, Which Is The Prime Cause Of Infidelity, That Infallible Rejuvenator.
Infidelity
Age
Causes
Slums May Well Be Breeding Grounds Of Crime, But Middle Class Suburbs Are Incubators Of Apathy And Delirium.
Class
Delirium Tremens
Apathy
There Is Immunity In Reading, Immunity In Formal Society, In Office Routine, In The Company Of Old Friends And In The Giving Of Officious Help To Strangers, But There Is No Sanctuary In One Bed From The Memory Of Another. The Past With Its Anguish Will Break Through Every Defense-line Of Custom And Habit; We Must Sleep And Therefore We Must Dream.
Dream
Memories
Grief
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.
Country
Past
Civilization
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.
Education
Disappointment
School
The Disasters Of The World Are Due To Its Inhabitants Not Being Able To Grow Old Simultaneously. There Is Always A Raw And Intolerant Nation Eager To Destroy The Tolerant And Mellow.
War
World
Able
Always Be Nice To Those Younger Than You, Because They Are The Ones Who Will Be Writing About You.
Inspirational
Nice
Writing
No One Over Thirty-five Is Worth Meeting Who Has Not Something To Teach Us, Something More Than We Could Learn For Ourselves, From A Book.
Birthday
Wisdom
Book
Idleness Is Only A Coarse Name For My Infinite Capacity For Living In The Present.
Names
Literature
Infinite
Everything Is A Dangerous Drug Except Reality Which Is Unendurable.
Reality
History
Drug
Trending Author
Elliot Perlman
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Charles Osgood
Guy Laliberte
Charles Mackay
Etta James
Category
Information