I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Interpretation
The quote humorously critiques cultural stereotypes by suggesting that combining traits from different cultures could create an undesirable experience.
Peter Ustinov's quote playfully juxtaposes Italian punctuality, German humor, and English wine to illustrate a comedic 'hell' that stems from contrasting cultural traits. This highlights how blending certain characteristics from different cultures can lead to an amusingly chaotic or uncomfortable situation, emphasizing the humor found in cultural stereotypes and differences.
In practice
This quote would be great to use at a multicultural gathering to break the ice and start a conversation about cultural differences.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.
Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.
Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.
Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.
No louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands or lap-dogs breathe their last.
The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.
Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
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