The Magnificent Ambersons quotes

View Quote This is our last walk together, Lucy...This is the last time I'll see you ever, ever in my life. Mother and I are starting on a trip around the world tomorrow. We've made no plans at all for coming back...Lucy. I can't stand this...It's quite a shock, Lucy...to find out just how deeply you care, to see how much difference this makes to you...Can't stand this any longer. I can't Lucy. Good-bye, Lucy. It's good-bye. I think it's good-bye for good, Lucy.

View Quote In those days, they had time for everything: Time for sleigh rides, and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions, and open house on New Years, and all-day picnics in the woods, and even that prettiest of all vanished customs: the serenade.

View Quote Isabel: It's changed. It's so changed.
Uncle Jack: You mean, you mean the town? You mean the old place has changed, don't you dear?
Isabel: Yes.
Uncle Jack: It will change to a happier place, old dear, now that you're back. You're going to get well here.

View Quote Against so homespun a background, the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral.

View Quote Uncle Jack: Your grandson. Last night, he seemed inclined to melancholy.
Major Amberson: What about? Not getting remorseful about all the money he spent at college, is he? I wonder what he thinks I'm made of.
Uncle Jack: Gold, and he's right about that part of you, father.
Major Amberson: What part?
Uncle Jack: Heart.
Major Amberson: I suppose that may account for how heavy it feels nowadays, sometimes. This town seems to be rolling right over that old heart you mentioned just now, Jack. Rolling over us and burying us under.

View Quote Isabel: Lucy's on a visit, Father. She's spending a week with a school friend.
Eugene: She'll be back Monday.
Fanny: George, how does it happen you didn't tell us before? He never said a word to us about Lucy going away!
Major Amberson: Probably afraid to. Didn't know that he might break down and cry if we tried to speak of it, isn't that so, Georgie? [He laughs at George]
Fanny: [to George] Or didn't Lucy tell you that she was going?
George: She told me!
Major Amberson: At any rate, Georgie didn't approve. I suppose you two aren't speaking again. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

View Quote I guess she's still mad at him...Isabel. Major Amberson's daughter. Eugene Morgan's her best beau. Took a bit too much to drink the other night right out here and stepped clean through the bass fiddle serenadin' her.

View Quote [to Eugene, as he struggles to start his car] Get a horse! Get a horse!

View Quote George: Well it struck me that Mr. Morgan was looking pretty absent-minded most of the time. And he certainly is dressing better than he used to.
Uncle Jack: Oh, he isn't dressing better, he's dressing up. Fanny, you ought to be a little encouraging when a prized bachelor begins to show by his haberdashery what he wants you to think about him.
George: Well, Jack tells me the fact he's been doing quite well.
Uncle Jack: Quite well.
George: Listen Aunt Fanny. I shouldn't be a bit surprised to have him request an interview and declare that his intentions are honorable.
[Fanny cries and leaves the room]
George: It's getting so that you can't joke with her about anything anymore. With all the gambling, we found out that father's estate was all washed up and he didn't leave anything. I thought she'd feel better when he turned over his insurance to her.
Uncle Jack: I think we've been teasing her about the wrong things. Fanny hasn't got much in her life. You know George, just being an Aunt isn't really the great career it sometimes seemed to be. Really don't know of anything much Fanny has got, except her feeling about Eugene.

View Quote Horseless Carriages! Automobiles!...People aren't gonna spend their lives lying on their backs in the road letting grease drip in their faces. No, I think your father better forget about 'em.

View Quote Uncle Jack: I told her I thought she ought to make Georgie let her come home, but she doesn't urge it. George seems to like the life there in his grand, gloomy and peculiar way.
Eugene: And you say he won't let her come home.
Uncle Jack: I don't think he uses force. He's very gentle with her. I doubt that the subject is mentioned between them yet - knowing my interesting nephew as you do, wouldn't you think 'that' was about the way to put it?
Eugene: Knowing him as I do, yes.

View Quote Trousers with a crease were considered plebian; the crease proved that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was ready-made.

View Quote [to Fanny, about George] You know what he said to me when we went in that room? He said, 'You must have known my mother wanted you to come here today, so that I could ask you to forgive me.' We shook hands.

View Quote [to George] I can just guess what that was about. He's telling her what you did to Eugene...You're not going in there!...You keep away from here...Go on to the top of the stairs. Go on! It's indecent, like squabbling outside the door of an operating room. The idea of you going in there now. Just telling Isabel the whole thing. Now you stay here and let him tell her. He's got some consideration for her...I thought you already knew everything I did. I was just suffering...Oh, I was a fool. Eugene never would have looked at me, even if he'd never seen Isabel. And they haven't done any harm! She made Wilbur happy. She was a true wife to him as long as he lived. Here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by him, I'm just ruining them. Leave her alone.

View Quote Mrs. Foster: What she minds is his (Eugene) makin' a clown of himself in her own front yard. Made her think he didn't care much about her. She's probably mistaken but it's too late for her to think anything else now. The wedding will be a big Amberson-style thing. Raw oysters floating in scooped-out blocks of ice. The band from out of town. And then Wilbur will take Isabel on the carefulest little wedding trip he can manage. And she'll be a good wife to him. But they'll have the worst-spoiled lot of children this town will ever see...She couldn't love Wilbur, could she? Well, it'll all go to her children, and she'll ruin them.
Narrator: The prophetess proved to be mistaken in a single detail merely...Wilbur and Isabel did not have children; they had only one.
Mrs. Foster: Only one! But I'd like to know if he isn't spoiled enough for a whole carload.
Narrator: Again, she found none to challenge her. George Amberson Minafer, the Major's one grandchild, was a princely terror.