Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004)
Born Peter Alexander von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning English-German actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur.
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.
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
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.
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.
He was a superb raconteur — never vicious, never cruel.
He was a man for all seasons, perhaps the true renaissance man.
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well.
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.
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.
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.
Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.
The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
He would always see the bright side of something, even something that would be very annoying to him or to all of us around him. He would get over it and he would always find that there was something positive to be gained from it. He was a giver, throughout everything, and a wonderful warm person.
Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.
I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry land.