Cyril Connolly, from the introduction to The Condemned Playground

"The feeling of evanescence has always been with me as a critic; I feel I am fighting a rearguard action, for although each generation discovers anew the value of masterpieces, generations are never quite the same and ours are in fact coming to prefer the response induced by violent stimuli- film, radio, press- to the slow permeation of personality by great literature."