All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril ConnollyRead
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The artist may be privileged, but their creativity often comes with financial struggle.
Cyril Connolly's quote suggests that artists belong to a social class that typically enjoys leisure time; however, they often lack the financial means to afford that leisure. This paradox highlights the difficult position of artists who, despite being part of the leisured classes, frequently struggle to sustain their creative pursuits due to financial constraints.
Themes
ArtistLeisureStruggleCreativityClass
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the challenges faced by creative professionals, this quote can illustrate the paradox of artistic life.
More from Cyril Connolly
All quotes βWhen 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 ConnollyRead
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
Cyril ConnollyRead
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
Cyril ConnollyRead
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
Cyril ConnollyRead
When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
Cyril ConnollyRead
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