Cyril Connolly Quotes

We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

I think the best thing about a bubble is that it pops and is gone. That is what makes it so precious.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

To me, beauty and sadness are very closely linked. Truly beautiful things make me sad because I know they are going to fade. When I see a beautiful 20-year-old boy or girl-and they are breathtaking-I am filled with a kind of sadness. But maybe they are beautiful because we know they are not permanent and they are in a kind of transition.

I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.

Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. -Blackberry picking

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.

These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.

Mortalhood is a fine state to visit, but you'd better not call it home.

She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.

Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently.

Well, I’ve had my fun; I’ve had it, he thought, looking up at the swinging baskets of pale geraniums. And it was smashed to atoms—his fun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, this escapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better part of life, he thought—making onself up; making her up; creating an exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd it was, and quite true; all this one could never share—it smashed to atoms.

Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear.

Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again fade away and are dead.