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"A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out."
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Exlpore more Excellence quotes
"Those who believe in quality produce quality goods."
"Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence."
"There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority."
"Become so good they can't ingore you, and you are on the path to success. Become so good they can't stand you, and you are on the path to greatness."
"He loved the sea for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity-proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive-a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?"
"A servant who serves excellently from his whole heart with due courage and humility is never a servant, but a master of his work!"
"Negotiation is permissible for mediocrity not for excellence."
"I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best."
"Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit."
"Excellence is not an event but a habit."
Explore more quotes by Cyril Connolly
"Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature."
"There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives."
"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."
"It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing."
"The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven."
"No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book."
"The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence."
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