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Quotes from The Unquiet Grave — Cyril Connolly

1903–1974 England

← All quotes by Cyril Connolly

20 quotes

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.

The Unquiet Grave (1945)

The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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 will be lurking.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

'Dry again?' said the Crab to the Rock-Pool. 'So would you be,' replied the Rock-Pool, 'if you had to satisfy, twice a day, the insatiable sea.'

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Ridiculous as may seem the dualities of conflict at a given time, it does not follow that dualism is a worthless process. 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.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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 or ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. Neurotics are heartless.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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.

The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Cyril Connolly (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.