53 Quentin Chrisp Quotes
Vice is its own reward
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable
Flowers are words even a baby can understand
Manners are love in a cool climate
Los Angeles is just New York lying down
Men get laid, but women get screwed
Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are
Never get involved with someone who wants to change you
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors

Quentin Chrisp quotes with pictures

Life was a funny thing that occurred on the way to the grave
The trouble with children is that they're not returnable
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne
This woman did not fly to extremes, she lived there
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody
However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police
The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress
For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it
An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing
Never keep up with Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper
I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum
The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy
Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?
I don't hold with abroad and think that foreigners speak English when our backs are turned
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse
The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it
Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing, nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh
For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change
The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone, but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding
Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it
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
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
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
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep
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
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
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
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
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic, if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist, and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist
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
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?
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
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
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis

Quentin Chrisp sayings and pictures

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?"
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
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