Peter Ustinov
A diplomat these days is nothing but a headwaiter who’s allowed to sit down occasionally.
Children are a kind of confirmation of life. The only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Courage is not requisite for the loss of life. While it is for an injection, if you’re not used to it. There’s irony for you. (Romanoff and Juliet)
I can see from your utter misery, from your eagerness to misunderstand each other, and from you thoroughly bad temper, that this is the real thing.
I can take no allegiance to a flag if I do not know who’s holding it.
I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
People at the top of the tree are those without qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of personal thought.
The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place. (Romanoff and Juliet)
We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven’t thought up the questions.
H. G. Wells
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.
Cynicism is humour in ill-health.
He was quite sure he had been wronged. not to be wronged is to forego the first privilege of goodness.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Mae West
A man in the house is worth two in the street.
Boy, am I exhausted! I went on a double date last night and the other girl didn’t show up.
Give a man a free hand and he’ll run all over you.
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just as long as you don’t break any.
It’s not the men in your life that counts, it’s the life in your men.
Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.
She’s one of the finest women who ever walked the streets.
When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I’ve never tried before.
When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
Oscar O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
America is the only country which went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between.
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself.
I can resist everything but temptation.
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
There is a good deal to be said for blushing, if one can do it at the proper moment.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old I know that it is.
Hank Williams
You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.
Earl Wilson
Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
Sir Harold Wilson
A week is a long time in politics.
Everybody should have an equal chance - but they shouldn’t have a flying start.
One man’s wage increase is another man’s price increase.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain - in your pocket or purse or in your bank - has been devalued.
The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution.
Humbert Wolfe
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! The British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
Alexander Woollcott
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.
I am in no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only ask to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences.
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
The English have an extraordinary ability for flying in to a great calm.
Henry Youngman
Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesday, I go Fridays.
When I was a kid, I had no watch. I used to tell the time by my violin. I used to practice in the middle of the night and the neighbours would yell, "Fine time to practice the violin, three o’clock in the morning."
I stayed at one of the better hotels. I was in a place called The Fractured Arms. I paid my rent in advance - they put the window back in my room. You can imagine how big my room was - when I closed the door, the door- knob got in bed with me. It was small, even the mice were hunchbacks. I had a headache, the guy next door had to take the aspirin.