Robert Powell Quotations

I have found that a smile and a stick will carry you through all right, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is the smile that does the trick.

In Scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed.

The sport in Scouting is to find the good in every boy and develop it.

I was there at the birth of my son and had the extraordinary feeling when I first saw him of thinking this was the first person I would willingly die for. I had the same strong feelings when my daughter was born.

I think monogamy is a little unnatural, if I'm totally honest. You change. Things alter. It's the exception rather than the rule and I think it's exceptional to cope with it and manage it. It's hard work.

In the 1950s, as food rationing ended, I remember a plentiful supply of sweets for the first time.

There's not a human being alive I won't talk to. There's a quite simple rule. If you like somebody more than you dislike them you can have a relationship. Once you accept you like 75 per cent but 25 per cent you find irritating for this or that reason, you just have to ignore that 25 per cent.

It seems everyone in the world is now a potential member of the paparazzi. Most of the time people ask if they can take a picture with their mobiles but increasingly they don't bother to ask.

With the advent of Twitter and Facebook and other social networking sites, genuine privacy can only be found by renting a private villa for a holiday. Hotels are now out of the question for my wife and I.

I was born five days before D-Day in 1944. My father was a mechanical engineer, which was a reserved occupation, so he didn't have to enlist. My mother was a housewife. She worked in a bank before marrying my father.

Part of my job is to try and seduce people. It's what I get paid for, and if people get in the way of me doing my job I can be very difficult.

There is no teaching to compare with example.

I have a number of places on my wish list, including Antarctica, the Norwegian fjords, and the Amazon. I have a passion for wilderness, and Siberia is on my list - however, that may be a bridge too far.

I love being on stage. I'm completely, totally relaxed. It's the only time in my life when I know where I am and what's coming next. The other Robert Powell is probably fairly melancholic. Let's just say happiness isn't my default position. There are dark parts. I'm very good at it. I frighten people sometimes.

I vaguely remember we had an air-raid shelter in our yard. We lived in a semi-detached house with a small garden in the suburbs of Salford, a couple of miles from the docks.

The heartthrob thing came in the late 1960s, and to be honest, it was fun! But I was very aware that well-known actors are two people - who you are and who other people think you are. Life only gets tricky if you confuse the two.

When I die, I want to be the only person in the world not to have seen 'The Sound Of Music.'

When you get back from a trip, make a note of what you didn't wear. This will avoid packing it unnecessarily next time.

I have always been attracted to difficult work. There really doesn't seem much point in looking for the easy life as an actor. I would simply get bored.

I was 24 when I was offered 'Doomwatch.' There was an option for a further series, and I turned it down. It is a wonderfully glorious thing to be unknowingly arrogant.

A boy is naturally full of humor.

Make your life a happy one. That is where success is possible to every man.

It is a pity that the words "spiritual life" were ever invented, for they have caused so much confusion. For, in truth, there is only life-everyday life-which is simply what is at every moment.