Quotes By Peter Ustinov

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

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 habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

The point of living and of being an optimist is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.

I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.