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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

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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
Courses
Moralist
Course
Shocking
Lying
Mutual
Manners
Seems
Block
May
Basic
Good
Seem
People
Building
Mildly

More quotes by Quentin Crisp

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To lose is not always failure.
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I've always lived in the same way.
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The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely I can't go along with it.
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Exhibitionists have no friends, no friends at all.
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However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.
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It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way.
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In England, nobody's your friend.
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Assoon as I stepped out of my mother's womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
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I had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say 'Can I make up?' and he would say 'Oh yes - tinted?', or he would say, 'Oh yes - clotted?'
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No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.
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I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to Hamlet on the grounds that I knew who won.
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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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I don't think I have a tragic demeanor.
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I don't believe in convention at all. I do what I have to do to stay alive.
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Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
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Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
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When asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.
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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.
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The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn't even want the beastly thing.
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You can behave as badly as you like in America. Nobody notices.
Quentin Crisp