Cyril O'reilly Quotes & Sayings

It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential. — Cyril Connolly

frThe Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance. He is not felt as a burden for God is light, very light. Rays of light and knowledge stream before him as the Spirit approaches. The Spirit comes with the tenderness of a true friend to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console. — Cyril Of Jerusalem

I am a nationalist ... my native soil is the theatre. — Cyril Cusack

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933] — Cyril Connolly

The very exercise of leadership fosters capacity for it. — Cyril Falls

Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook. — Michael Dirda

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: "The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon." No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller. — Flannery O'Connor

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? — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

O God of our fathers, and Lord of mercy, who has made all things with your word, and ordained man through your wisdom, that he should have dominion over the creatures which you have made, give me wisdom that sits by your throne so that I might understand what is your will and be saved. For I am your servant. Amen. — Cyril Of Jerusalem

My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, "Take me to Charles's unhealthy pictures." Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little
I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers. — Evelyn Waugh

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. — Cyril Connolly

Youth is a period of missed opportunities. — Cyril Connolly

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality. — Cyril Connolly

Why do ants alone have parasites whose intoxicating moistures they drink and for whom they will sacrifice even their young? Because as they are the most highly socialized of insects, so their lives are the most intolerable. — Cyril Connolly

In the year 415, the woman scientist Hypatia, head of the legendary Alexandria library, was beaten to death by Christian monks who considered her a pagan. The leader of the monks, Cyril, was canonized a saint. — James A. Haught

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. — Cyril Connolly

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life. — Cyril Connolly

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. — Cyril Connolly

The actor has a constant problem of personal identity. — Cyril Cusack

Acting is the most brotherly and sisterly profession in the world. — Cyril Cusack

Why is the Rockefeller Commission so Single-Minded About a Lone Assassin in the Kennedy Case?, — Cyril Wecht

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us. — Cyril Connolly

A drunkard clasp his teeth and not undo 'em,
To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em. — Cyril Tourneur

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you. — Cyril Connolly

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post. — Cyril Connolly

Someone - Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? - once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable. — Joseph Epstein

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion. — Cyril Connolly

Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence. — Cyril Connolly

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. — Cyril Connolly

The artist secretes nostalgia around life. — Cyril Connolly

In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together. — Cyril Connolly

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied. — Cyril Connolly

Is it possible to love any human being without being torn limb from limb? — Cyril Connolly

So long as large armies go to battle, so long will the air arm remain their spearhead. — Cyril Falls

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. — Cyril Connolly