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Poverty
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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
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Prejudice
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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.
-Quentin Crisp
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Relationships
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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
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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.
-Quentin Crisp
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Respect
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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
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Results
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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
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Seduction
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A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.
-Quentin Crisp
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Sex
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Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
-Quentin Crisp
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Tact, Tactfulness
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Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
-Quentin Crisp
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Youth
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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.
-Quentin Crisp
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Books by and about Quentin Crisp