Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.

These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.

I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.

So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.

I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.

Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.

Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.

But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.

The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.

Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.

The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.

It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you're an actor, you know, don't really need to learn how to do it.

I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round.

I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.

I really think I'd have enjoyed the life of a Regency buck.

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?

I'm not surprised 'The Avengers' has such enduring popularity, because it was a groundbreaking series that changed television. It was the first show that put its leading man and leading lady on an equal footing and showed a woman fighting and kicking and throwing men around. That was a radical departure in its time.

Linda Thorson was a great actress with a great body, but she arrived just as 'The Avengers' was losing its appeal.

Retirement's the most wonderful thing. I get to enjoy all the things I never stopped to notice on the way up. After an extraordinary life, it's time to enjoy my retirement.

The very first thing you learn if you're a gentleman is that you never compare one woman to another. That's the way of all death.

Television has some lovely aspects to it and some ghastly aspects but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end.

There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.

Any form of a winning record in the conference is an accomplishment.

Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Real rebels are rarely anything but second rate outside their rebellion; the drain of time and temper is ruinous to any other accomplishment.

I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.

My most important professional accomplishment to date is the ability to keep working with absolutely no skills whatsoever.

To be loved is important as is having a sense of accomplishment but to love is equally important in life especially when it is combined with taking action to do something for someone else to make their life better.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

Although it was a great accomplishment to win a gold medal, as soon as they put it on you, that's it; your career is over.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I can now successfully drive a stick. That's a huge accomplishment.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.