Cyril Connolly

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

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence. ”

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. ”

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. ”

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature. ”

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose. ”

Youth is a period of missed opportunities. ”

A great writer creates 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. ”

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. ”

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth. ”