What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
QUENTIN CRISPOf course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?
More Quentin Crisp Quotes
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The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it
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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.
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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.
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I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.
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I never spend my time doing anything I’ll have to do again tomorrow.
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And were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man’s soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.
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In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!
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The more people one has to love, the more one’s capacity to love stretches.
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An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
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I don’t think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn’t something you’ve done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.
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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.
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Never get involved with someone who wants to change you
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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.
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I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”
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The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.
QUENTIN CRISP