Enemies of Promise Quotes

“Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“Neither harsh reviews, the contempt of equals nor the indifference of superiors can affect those who have once tapped the great heart of suffering humanity and found out what a goldmine it is.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over .... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“Like many lazy people, once I started work I could not stop; perhaps that is why we avoid it.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

“Popular success is a palace built for a writer by publishers, journalists, admirers, and professional reputation makers, in which a silent army of termites, rats, dry rot, and death-watch beetles are tunnelling away, till, at the very moment of completion, it is ready to fall down.”
― Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise