Cyril Connolly Quotes

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

History is the study of what civilizations die from. Literature is the study of what civilizations live for.

Things have changed so much. People walked away from a simple life we had in the '20s and '30s, and I am glad that I am able to touch that period in our lives with the shows that I do and with the music that I do.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.

The American dream has always depended on the dialogue between the present and the past. In our architecture, as in all our other arts-indeed, as in our political and social culture as a whole-ours has been a struggle to formulate and sustain a usable past.

The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.

He came to this country like a torch on fire and he swallowed air as he walked forward and he gave out light

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

When I first decided to be a writer, that meant dealing with preoccupations and concerns that took little account of Indian traditions. I saw India's past as part of an antiquity rendered irrelevant by modernity, which with its science, nation states, free enterprises, and consumer societies was supposed to have solved all problems.

Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the coarse or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved

In the Twenties, it wasn't a remarkable thing for a singer to be an actor, or even to be involved in politics. If this is our roots, how can you blame the branches for following the course of the roots.

Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country.

I am a little Jew of Vitebsk. All that I paint, all that I do, all that I am, is just the little Jew of Vitebsk.

Salvador [Dali] was brought up in Spain, a country colored by the legends of Hannibal, El Greco, and Cervantes. I was brought up in Ohio, a region steeped in the tradition of Coxey's Army, the Anti-Saloon League, and William Howard Taft.

It’s history. It’s poetry.

I have always been in favor of a healthy Americanization, but that does not mean a complete disavowal of our German heritage. It means that our character should take on the best of that which is American, and combine it with the best of that which is German. By doing this, we can best serve the American people and their civilization.

To reclaim our past and insist that it become a part of our human history is the task that lies before us. For the future requires that women, as well as men, shape the world destiny.

The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.

If during their education our youths become alienated from their language, history, ancestors, culture and civilization, it means there is a very serious educational problem there.

I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.