All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril ConnollyRead
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that we are trapped by our own thoughts and self-perceptions.
Cyril Connolly's quote reflects the idea that individuals often find themselves confined by their own insecurities, fears, and self-imposed limitations. It implies that our inner selves can act as prisons, preventing us from fully expressing ourselves or achieving true freedom. The 'dungeon of the self' symbolizes the burdens of self-doubt and negative self-reflections that can hold us back in life, urging us to recognize and transcend these constraints.
Themes
SelfLifeFreedomPrisonFearPerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal challenges.
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
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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
Similar quotes
There is nothing little in God; His mercy is like Himself-it is infinite. You cannot measure it. His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners, after great lengths of time, and then gives great favours and great privileges, and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God.
Charles SpurgeonRead
You do not explain the tree by telling of the water it has drunk, the minerals it has absorbed, and the sunlight that strengthened it.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
Franz KafkaRead
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
Sojourner TruthRead
The world is quieter now. It is never quiet, but it can get quieter. What strange creatures we are, to find silence peaceful, when permanent silence is the thing we most dread. Nighttime is not that. Nighttime still rustles, still creaks and whispers and trembles in its throat. It is not darkness we fear, but our own helplessness within it. How merciful to have been granted the other senses.
David LevithanRead
God is far more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved.
J. C. RyleRead