The Magnificent Ambersons quotes

View Quote Lucy: Ever hear the Indian name for that little grove of beech trees?
Eugene: No, and you never did either. Well?
Lucy: The name was Loma-Nashah. It means: 'They-couldn't-help-it.'
Eugene: Doesn't sound like it.
Lucy: Indian names don't. There was a bad Indian chief, the worst Indian that ever lived, and his name was...it was Vendonah. Means: 'Rides-Down-Everything.'
Eugene: What?
Lucy: His name was Vendonah, same thing as: 'Rides-Down-Everything.'
Eugene: I see. [She laughs] Go on.
Lucy: Vendonah was unspeakable. He was so proud he wore iron shoes and walked over people's faces. So at last, the tribe decided that it wasn't a good enough excuse for him that he was young and inexperienced. He'd have to go. So they took him down to the river, put him in a canoe, and pushed him out from shore. The current carried him on down to the ocean. And he never got back. They didn't want him back, of course. They hated Vendonah, but they weren't able to discover any other warrior they wanted to make chief in his place. They couldn't help feeling that way.
Eugene: I see. So that's why they named the place: 'They-couldn't help-it.'
Lucy: Must have been.
Eugene: So you're going to stay in your garden. You think it's better just to keep walking about among your flower beds and get old like a pensive garden lady in a Victorian engraving? Huh?
Lucy: I suppose I'm like that tribe that lived here, Papa. I had too much unpleasant excitement. I don't want any more. In fact, I don't want anything but you.
Eugene: You don't? What was the name of that grove?
Lucy: 'They-could...'
Eugene: No, the Indian name, I mean.
Lucy: Oh. Mola-Haha. [They laugh together]
Eugene: Mola-Haha. That wasn't the name you said.
Lucy: Oh, I've forgotten.
Eugene: So you have. Perhaps you remember the chief's name better?
Lucy: I don't.
Eugene: I hope some day you can forget it.

View Quote Eugene: Automobiles will carry our streets clear out to the county line.
Uncle Jack: Oh, I hope you're wrong. Because if people go to moving that far, real estate values here in the old residence part of town will be stretched pretty thin.
Major Amberson: So your devilish machines are gonna ruin all your old friends, eh Gene? Do you really think they're gonna change the face of the land?
Eugene: They're already doing it, Major. It can't be stopped. Automobiles...
George: Automobiles are a useless nuisance.
Major Amberson: What did you say George?
George: I said, 'Automobiles are a useless nuisance.' Never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.
Uncle Jack: Of course you forget Mr. Morgan makes them. Also did his share in inventing them. If you weren't so thoughtless, he might think you're rather offensive.
Eugene: I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization. It may be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls. I'm not sure. But automobiles have come. And almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. It may be that in ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but would have to agree with George: that automobiles had no business to be invented.

View Quote Benson: A real flair for the law. That's right. Couldn't wait till tomorrow to begin. The law's a jealous mistress and a stern mistress.
George: I can't do it. I can't take up the law.
Benson: What?
George: I've come to tell you that I've got to find something quicker. Something that pays from the start...Well sir, I've heard that they pay very high wages to people in dangerous trades, people that handle touchy chemicals, high explosives. Men in the dynamite factories. Thought I'd see if I couldn't get a job like that. I want to get started tomorrow if I could.
Benson: Georgie. Your grandfather and I were boys together. Don't you think I ought to know what's the trouble?
George: Well sir, it's Aunt Fanny. She set her mind on this particular boardinghouse. It seems she put everything in the Headlight Company. Well, she got some old cronies, and I guess she's been looking forward to the games of bridge and the harmless kind of gossip that goes on in such places. Really, it's the life she'd like better than anything else. It struck me that she's just about got to have it.
Benson: You certainly are the most practical young man I ever met.

View Quote Fanny: George! You've struck just the right treatment to adopt. You're doing just the right thing.
George: Oh, what do you want?
Fanny: Your father would thank you if he could see what you're doing.
George: Why the mysterious detective business? You make me dizzy!
Fanny: You don't care to hear that I approve of what you're doing?
George: For the gosh sakes, what in the world is wrong with you?
Fanny: Oh, you're always picking on me, always! Ever since you were a little boy!
George: Oh, my gosh!
Fanny: You wouldn't treat anybody in the world like this, except old Fanny! 'Old Fanny,' you say, 'It's nobody but old Fanny, so I'll kick her. Nobody'll resent it. I'll kick her all I want to!' And you're right. I haven't got anything in the world since my brother died. Nobody. Nothing!
George: Oh, my gosh!
Fanny: I never, never in the world would have told you about it or even made the faintest reference to it...if I hadn't seen that somebody else had told you, or you'd have found out for yourself in some way.
George: Somebody else had told me what?
Fanny: How people are talking about your mother.
George: What did you say?!
Fanny: Of course, I understood what you were doing when you started being rude to Eugene. I knew you'd give Lucy up in a minute if it came to a question of your mother's reputation.
George: Look here!
Fanny: ...because you said...
George: Look here! Just what do you mean?
Fanny: I only wanted to say that I'm sorry for you, George, that's all. But it's only old Fanny, so whatever she says, pick on her for it. Hammer her! Hammer her!
George: Jack said...
Fanny: It's only poor old lonely Fanny!
George: Jack said that if there was any gossip, it was about you! He said people might be laughing about the way you ran after Morgan, but that was all.
Fanny: Oh yes, it's always Fanny, ridiculous old Fanny, always, always!
George: Listen. You said mother let him come here just on your account, and now you say...
Fanny: He did. Anyhow, he liked to dance with me. He danced with me as much as he did with her...
George: You told me mother never saw him except when she was chaperoning you.
Fanny: Well, you don't suppose that stops people from talking, do you? They just thought I didn't count! 'It's only Fanny Minafer,' I suppose they'd say. Besides, everybody knew he'd been engaged to her.
George: What's that?
Fanny: Everybody knows it. Everybody in this town knows that Isabel never really cared for any other man in her life.
George: I believe I'm going crazy. You mean you lied when you told me there wasn't any talk?
Fanny: It never would have amounted to anything if Wilbur had lived.
George: You mean Morgan might have married you?
Fanny: No, because I don't know that I'd have accepted him.
George: Are you trying to tell me that because he comes here and they see her with him, driving and all that, they think that they were right in saying that she was, she was in love with him before, before my father died?
Fanny: Why, George! Don't you know that's what they say? You must know that everybody in town...What are you going to do, George?

View Quote Isabel: [to George] Darling, did you get something to eat?...Are you sure you didn't catch cold coming home?... [about Eugene] Has he asked about me? I would have liked to have seen him. Just once.

View Quote [to George] Once I stood where we're standing now to say goodbye to a pretty girl. Only it was in the old station before this was built. We called it the depot. We knew we wouldn't see each other again for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it. She stood there crying - don't even know where she lives now. Or if she is living. If she ever thinks of me she probably imagines I'm still dancing in the ballroom of the Amberson mansion. She probably thinks of the mansion as still beautiful. Still the finest house in town. Ah, life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks. When they're gone, you can't tell where, or what the devil you did with them...I've always been fond of you, Georgie. I can't say I've always liked ya. But we all spoiled you terribly when you were a boy....There have been times when I thought you ought to be hanged. And just for a last word, there may be somebody else in this town (Lucy) who's always felt about you like that. Fond of you, I mean, no matter how much it seems you ought to be hanged.

View Quote Fanny: Eugene Morgan isn't in your father's thoughts at all one way or the other. Why should he be?...
Uncle Jack: Are you two at it again?
George: What makes you and everybody so excited over this man Morgan?
Uncle Jack: This man Morgan.
Fanny: Excited!
Uncle Jack: Oh, shut up.
Fanny: Can't...can't people be glad to see an old friend without silly children like you having to make a to-do about it? I've just been suggesting to your mother that she might give a little dinner for him.
George: For who?
Fanny: For whom, Georgie.
George: [mocking her] For whom, Georgie.
Fanny: For Mr. Morgan and his daughter.
George: Oh look here. Don't do that. Mother mustn't do that.
Fanny: [mocking him] Mother mustn't do that.
George: Wouldn't look well.
Fanny: Wouldn't look...See here Georgie Minafer! I suggest that you just march straight on into your room. Sometimes you say things that show you have a pretty mean little mind.
George: What upsets you this much?
Uncle Jack: Shut up!
Fanny: I know what you mean. You're trying to insinuate that I get your mother to invite Eugene Morgan here on my account...
Uncle Jack: I'm gonna move to a hotel.
Fanny: ...because he's a widower.
George: What?
Fanny: What?
George: Ha, ha, ha. [Fanny cackles back in mock laughter at him] I'm trying to insinuate that you're setting your cap for him and getting mother to help you?
Fanny: OH! [Fanny slams her door on him]
George: Is that what you mean?

View Quote Eugene: Isabel, dear.
Isabel: Yes, Eugene.
Eugene: Don't you think you should tell George?
Isabel: About us?
Eugene: Yes.
Isabel: There's still time.
Eugene: I think he should hear it from you.
Isabel: He will, dearest. Soon. Soon.

View Quote Fanny: The important thing is that Wilbur did get her, and not only got her, but kept her.
Eugene: There's another important thing, that is, for me. In fact, it's the only thing that makes me forgive that bass viol for getting in my way...Lucy.

View Quote George: Look here, father, about this man Morgan and his old sewing machine. Don't they want to get grandfather to put some money into it? Isn't that what he's up to?
Fanny: You little silly! What on earth are you talking about? Eugene Morgan's perfectly able to finance his own inventions these days.
George: I'll bet he borrows money from Uncle Jack.
Isabel: Georgie. Why do you say such a thing?
George: He just strikes me as that sort of a man. Isn't he father?
Wilbur: He was a fairly wild fellow twenty years ago. He's like you in one thing, Georgie. He spent too much money. Only he didn't have any mother to get money out of her grandfather for it. But I believe he's done fairly well of late years, and I doubt if he needs anybody else's money to back his horseless carriage.
George: Oh, what's he brought the old thing here for, then?
Wilbur: I'm sure I don't know. You'll want to ask him.

View Quote George: I'm only going to be getting $8 a week at the law office. You'd be paying more of the expenses than I would.
Fanny: I'd be paying? I'd be paying?
George: Certainly you would. We'd be using more of your money than mine.
Fanny: My money. My money. [She makes a desperate laugh] I've got $28, that's all.
George: $28?
Fanny: That's all. I know I told you I didn't put everything in the Headlight Company, but I did. Every cent, and it's gone...Oh, I know what you're gonna do. [Sobbing] You're, you're gonna leave me in the lurch!
George: I knew your mother wanted me to watch over you, and try and make something like a home for you, and I tried. I tried to make things as nice for you as I could...I walked my heels down looking for a place for us to live. I-I walked and walked over this town. I didn't ride one block on a streetcar.
Fanny: [about the boiler she is leaning against] It's not hot, it's cold. The plumber's disconnected it. I wouldn't mind if they hadn't...I wouldn't mind if it burned me George!

View Quote George: Fair! Fair when he says that he and you don't care what people say? But you're my mother. You're an Amberson.
Isabel: We'll go away for a while, you and I.

View Quote George: How'd all these ducks get to know you so quick? I really don't see why my mother invited them.
Lucy: Maybe she didn't want to offend their fathers and mothers.
George: I hardly think that my mother need worry about offending anybody in this old town.
Lucy: It must be wonderful, Mr. Amberson, Mr. Minafer, I mean.
George: What must be wonderful?
Lucy: To be so important as that.
George: Oh, that isn't important...Anybody that really is anybody ought to be able to go about as they like in their own town, I should think.

View Quote Eugene: You're the same Isabel I used to know - you're a divinely ridiculous woman.
Isabel: Divinely ridiculous just counterbalance each other, don't they? Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I'm nothing in particular?
Eugene: No, that doesn't seem to be precisely what I meant.

View Quote Policeman: [about automobiles] It's wonderful the damage one of these little machines can do. You'd never believe it.