# Quote — Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant

> 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.

- Author: [Quentin Crisp](https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp.md)
- Book: [The Naked Civil Servant](https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp#The_Naked_Civil_Servant_(1968)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant/the-consuming-desire

## More from this book

> To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant/to-read-a-novel.md)

> Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant/michelangelo-worked-from.md)

> Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/quentin-crisp/the-naked-civil-servant/posing-was-the.md)