Quote

Of 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?

Quentin Crisp

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Quentin Crisp
Age: 90 †
Born: 1908
Born: December 25
Died: 1999
Died: November 21
Actor
Autobiographer
Film Actor
Graphic Designer
Model
Socialite
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Writer
Sutton
London
Daniel Pratt
Denis Charles Pratt
Seems
Manners
May
Block
Good
Basic
People
Seem
Building
Mildly
Courses
Moralist
Course
Shocking
Lying
Mutual

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

Image
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
Quentin Crisp
Image
An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
Quentin Crisp
Image
God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said.
Quentin Crisp
Image
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.
Quentin Crisp
Image
In England, nobody's your friend.
Quentin Crisp
Image
I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.
Quentin Crisp
Image
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Quentin Crisp
Image
No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
Quentin Crisp
Image
Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.
Quentin Crisp
Image
What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note shows incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
Quentin Crisp
Image
The Americans, of course, are quite dotty with hospitality.
Quentin Crisp
Image
The ... problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a real man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who goes with other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.
Quentin Crisp
Image
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?'
Quentin Crisp
Image
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.
Quentin Crisp
Image
Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.
Quentin Crisp