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 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
I recommend limiting ones involvement in other peoples lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises. – Quentin Crisp
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
If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden