Manners are love in a cool climate.
Quentin Crisp

Men get laid, but women get screwed.
Quentin Crisp

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
Quentin Crisp

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
Quentin Crisp

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.
Quentin Crisp

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

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.
Quentin Crisp

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.
Quentin Crisp

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
Quentin Crisp

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.
Quentin Crisp

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
Quentin Crisp

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
Quentin Crisp