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Quentin Crisp [1908-1999] English

Rank: 101
Writer

Quentin Crisp was an English writer and raconteur.
From a conventional suburban background, Crisp as a youth enjoyed wearing make-up and painting his nails and worked as a rent-boy in his teens.

Happiness, Time, Cool, Failure, Freedom, Funny, Health, Intelligence, Parenting, Relationship

Quote	Tags	Rank
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.	Time	101
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.	Time	102
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.		103
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.	Freedom	104
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.		105
Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.	Funny	106
Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?		107
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.	Failure	108
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?		109
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.	Happiness	110
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.		111
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.		112
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.		113
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.	Happiness	114
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.		115
Men get laid, but women get screwed.		116
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.		117
I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.		118
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.		119
An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.		120
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.		121
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.	Parenting	122
Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.		123
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.		124
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.	Health	125
For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.		126
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.	Relationship	201
Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.		202
Manners are love in a cool climate.	Cool	203
The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.		204
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.		205
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.		206
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.	Intelligence	207
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.		208
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.		209
The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.		210
For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.		211
However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.		212
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.		213
Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.		214
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.		215
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.		216

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