Cyril Connolly: Quotes about art

Cyril Connolly was British author. Explore interesting quotes on art.

Cyril Connolly: 98 quotes3 likes

“… art is made by the alone for the alone… The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication…”

Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once, and they require separate techniques.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 3: The Challenge of the Mandarins (p. 19)

“You imply our education is of no use to you in after life. But no education is. We are not an employment agency; all we can do is to give you a grounding in the art of mixing with your fellow men, to tell you what to expect from life and give you an outward manner and inward poise, an old prescription from the eighteenth century which we call a classical education, an education which confers the infrequent virtues of good sense and good taste and the benefit of dual nationality, English and Mediterranean, and which, taking into account the difficulties of modern life, we find the philosophy best able to overcome them.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 24: Vale (p. 258)

“So wrote Pater, calling an art-for-art's sake muezzin to the faithful from the topmost turret of the ivory tower.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 5: Anatomy of Dandyism (p. 37)

“There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 14: The Charlock’s Shade (p. 116)

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

Cyril Connolly book The Unquiet Grave

Part II: Te Palinure Petens
The Unquiet Grave (1944)