Quentin Crisp

Writer

1908-12-25

Books by Quentin Crisp

Naked Civil Servant
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The Naked Civil Servant / How to Become a Virgin / Resident Alien
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The last word
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Quotes by Quentin Crisp

Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
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All the golden societies of the past to which historians point and turn their wistful smiles have had what patience-players would call a discard pile. They operated on two levels with a slave class who worked, ate, slept, and died and a leisured class who reclined on one elbow and spoke. Naturally it is from this latter group that we learn what life at that time was like. It often makes charming reading but we can hardly take it to be the whole truth.
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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 —the trouble with you.— Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 —the trouble with you.— Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.
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Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
Read quote
All the golden societies of the past to which historians point and turn their wistful smiles have had what patience-players would call a discard pile. They operated on two levels with a slave class who worked, ate, slept, and died and a leisured class who reclined on one elbow and spoke. Naturally it is from this latter group that we learn what life at that time was like. It often makes charming reading but we can hardly take it to be the whole truth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
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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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For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.
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Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
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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.
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Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?
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