Quentin Crisp's Quotes

Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.

For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?

It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.

It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.