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Quins led 10-0 in a match that featured plenty of incident including two red cards, two yellow cards and a penalty try, but it is the visitors who head into Europe on the back of a morale-boosting win.
But while disappointment and frustration were the over-riding emotions after the match, Quins director of rugby Conor O'Shea insists his players have plenty to be positive about ahead of Friday's continental clash with London Wasps.
"I'm proud of the effort and I hope the Harlequins supporters are proud of what they saw out there," said O'Shea, after the match against Leicester.
"I hope we don't mope and don't feel sorry for ourselves and that we understand how good a side we can be when we grow up through these things.
"Yes, we have Nick Easter and Nick Evans who are experienced guys but we have a lot of youngsters throughout our squad. We'll look back and learn. Pain is a great motivator.
"Friday is another massive game and it's how people grow up and learn. It'll take a couple of days to get over the Leicester game but we just want to make sure that we play like that week in, week out."
O'Shea was understandably impressed with elements of his side's performance against a Leicester side who arrived in West London on the back of a 36-7 thumping of Bath at The Rec.
A young Quins outfit played an entertaining brand of rugby against the English game's most decorated side and the result could so easily have gone their way.
And while the Quins faithful were quick to criticise referee Wayne Barnes during and after the match, O'Shea himself provided a more constructive insight at his post-match press conference.
"We're a good rugby side and we know we are," said O'Shea, who was keen to focus on his side's pluses and minuses rather than on the sendings off of Joe Marler and Marcos Ayerza or the sin binnings of Will Skinner and Mark Lambert.
"We created so many chances and we played some fantastic rugby but we'll look at our inaccuracies when we made line breaks and when we had try-scoring opportunities. That's what we'll look at. I know what everybody else will be looking at…but we could have had that game out of sight.
"I'm proud of what we can become as a rugby team because we had a lot of young guys out there. We've got some fellas who have real, real ambition. They stuck at it. We obviously finished the game stronger.
"We played with ambition all the time. Were we inaccurate at times? Yes, and that's what cost us. We broke them time after time and didn't score.
"They're a top side Leicester. You don't blow sides like Leicester away and put 40 points on them. We could have put 15 or 20 and daylight between us but we didn't. We lost and let's look at what we did wrong as opposed to looking at all the other things that everyone can see."
