All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Interpretation
Charming individuals often mask their need for validation from others.
This quote by Cyril Connolly suggests that the appealing qualities of charming people may hide a deeper vulnerability β their reliance on the approval and appreciation of those around them. This dependence can indicate insecurity, revealing that beneath their charming facade lies a yearning for external validation, which could impact their true sense of self-worth.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about social dynamics.
When 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?
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
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.
We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.
A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.
I do my best to please everybody, far more than they'd ever guess. I try to laugh it all off, because I don't want to let them see my trouble.
Find the right people, not the best people.
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