Quotes by Quentin Crisp

About Quentin Crisp:

Quentin Crisp was an English writer and raconteur.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

Quentin Crisp

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Quentin Crisp

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.

Quentin Crisp

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

Quentin Crisp

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

Quentin Crisp

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

Quentin Crisp

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

Quentin Crisp

Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.

Quentin Crisp

Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?

Quentin Crisp

Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise.

Quentin Crisp

I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. 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.

Quentin Crisp

The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call “...

Quentin Crisp

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

Quentin Crisp

Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.

Quentin Crisp

Charisma is the ability to influence without logic.

Quentin Crisp

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.

Quentin Crisp

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Quentin Crisp

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

Quentin Crisp

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...

Quentin Crisp

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

Quentin Crisp

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

Quentin Crisp

Author Bio

  • NameQuentin Crisp
  • DescriptionWriter, Actor
  • BornDecember 25, 1908
  • DiedNovember 21, 1999
  • CountryUnited Kingdom; United States Of America
  • ProfessionActor; Author; Graphic Designer; Autobiographer
  • WorksThe Naked Civil Servant