Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004)
Born Peter Alexander von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning English-German actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur.
You know Seymour, there are some men who cannot stand too much perfection. They see it as a disease, which must be stamped out at its first rash showing.
Peter's most outstanding achievement was to be Peter Ustinov ... and he was an all-round wonderful person. I'm very glad to have known him, I shall miss him greatly.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well.
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
He was a man for all seasons, perhaps the true renaissance man.
He was a superb raconteur — never vicious, never cruel.
Claggert: We must serve the law, sir, or give up the right and privilege of service. It is only within that law that we may use our discretions according to our rank.
Captain Vere: You're so intelligent and so lucid for the rank you hold, Master At Arms.
Claggert: I thank you, sir.
Captain Vere: Yes, that's no flattery, Mr. Claggart. It's a melancholy fact. It's sad to see such qualities of mind bent to such a sorry purpose. What's the reason for it?
Claggert: I am what I am, sir. And what the world has made me.
Captain Vere: The world? The world demands that behind every peacemaker there be the gun, the gallows, the jail. Do you think it will always be so?
Claggert: I have no reason not to, sir.
Captain Vere: You live without hope?
Claggert: I live.
Captain Vere: But remember, Mr. Claggart, that even the man who wields the whip cannot defy the code we must obey and not be broken by it. That will be all.
I think he'd just get bored doing one thing. He would go from one thing to another I think because to him it was all one. That's what I loved about him. He was a very lovable man. I hardly knew him, I only met him two or three times, but each time was ingrained in my memory like being like some superb intellectual circus.
The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
The only one who's always punctual is Death … whatever the time he always strikes his knell at the first streak of dawn … and believe me, he knows what he's doing. How I hate the dawn! It's the hour of the firing squad. The last glass of brandy. The ultimate cigarette. The final wish. All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses … fix your bayonets boys …gentlemen, synchronize your watches … in ten seconds time the barrage starts … a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years... And finally dawn is the herald of the day, our twelve hours of unimportance, when we have to cede to the pressures of the powers, smile at people we have every reason but expediency to detest … A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally.
I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the world.
He had an extraordinarily varied career. He had enough careers for about six other men. He was an actor, director, writer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, did all that work for the United Nations as well. ... He always said that he acted for a living and wrote because he must, but I am convinced that he also performed because he must.
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
He was one of the great story tellers of modern times. The biggest shame is that we have so few people left these days who really tell stories.
Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I'd rather be buried at sea than on the shore when I come to die. Will you stand by the plank, mates, so I can shake a friendly hand before I sink?
Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.