Quentin Crisp Quotes (66 Quotes)

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.

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.

Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head . . .

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

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Vice is its own reward.

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.

For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.

If one is not going to take the necessary precautions to avoid having parents one must undertake to bring them up.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

Life was a funny thing that occurred on the way to the grave

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

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

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

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.

Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together, I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said ''If you truly love me, kill the bartender.''