Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first call promising.

—Cyril Connolly

About Cyril Connolly

Portrait of Cyril Connolly

Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–49) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful...

More quotations from Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.

—Cyril Connolly

The goal of every culture is to decay through overcivilization; the factors of decadence—luxury, skepticism, weariness, and superstition—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

—Cyril Connolly

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

—Cyril Connolly

learning people knowledge books the country

This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.

—Cyril Connolly

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

—Cyril Connolly

More quotations tagged with “gods”

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

wonder love gods good joy

When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

—John Steinbeck

justice wisdom learning intelligence safety gods childhood growth lying parental infallibility

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

—Eldridge Cleaver

We make people into Gods, desperate that they never leave us and hopeful that someday, if we ever deserve it, maybe they'll love us back even half way.

—Jennifer Elisabeth in Born Ready

love hope people gods

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

love gods lovers spectacle

History

2 Jan 2015 Added