Philadelphia Story, The (1940) quotes

View Quote Margaret: The course of true love...
Mike: ...gathers no moss.

View Quote Mike: I guess this must be love.
George: Your guess is correct, Mr. Connor.
Tracy: I'm just his faithful old dog Tray.
George: Give me your paw!
Tracy: You've got it. [He takes her hand and kisses it]

View Quote Dexter: You don't look as well as when I last saw you, Kittredge. Oh, you poor fellow. I know just how you feel...Why, you don't look old enough to get married. Not even the first time. And then you never did. She needs trouble to mature her, Kittredge. Give her lots of it.
George: I'm afraid she can't count on me for that.
Dexter: No, that's too bad. Sometimes, for your own sake, Red, I think you should have stuck to me longer.
Tracy: I thought it was for life, but the nice Judge gave me a full pardon.
Dexter: Aw, that's the old redhead, no bitterness, no recrimination, just a good swift left in the jaw.

View Quote Uncle Willie: [posing as Mr. Lord] I don't suppose a man ever had a better or finer family. You know, I often wake up in the night and say to myself, Seth - you lucky dog. What have you done to deserve it all?
Margaret: And what have you?

View Quote Tracy: Uncle Willie! Uncle Willie! How nice.
Mr. Lord: I beg your pardon.
Tracy: Please go on into lunch, everyone. I want a word with Uncle Willie...
Mr. Lord: I'm afraid I don't understand.
Tracy: You never have, but you came anyway, didn't you?
Mr. Lord: Oh! Still Justice, with her shining sword - eh, daughter? Who's on the spot?
Tracy: We are, thanks to you - Uncle Willie.

View Quote Mike: Well, are you sure you're doing the right thing? You know what happens to girls like you when they read books like mine. They begin to think. That's bad.
Tracy: These stories are beautiful. Why, Connor, they're almost poetry.
Mike: Well, don't kid yourself - they are.
Tracy: I can't make you out at all, now.
Mike: Really? I thought I was easy.
Tracy: So did I. But you're not. You, you talk so big and tough - and then you write like this. Which is which?
Mike: Both, I guess.
Tracy: No. No I-I believe you put the toughness on to save your skin.
Mike: Do you think so?
Tracy: I know a little about that.
Mike: Do you?
Tracy: Quite a lot.

View Quote Tracy: When you can do a thing like that book, how can you possibly do anything else?
Mike: Well, you may not believe this, but there are people in this world that must earn their living.
Tracy: Of course, but people buy books, don't they?
Mike: Not as long as there's a library around. You know, that book of mine represents two solid years' work. And it netted Connor something under six hundred dollars.
Tracy: But that shouldn't be!...What about your Miss Imbrie?
Mike: Well, Miss Imbrie is in somewhat the same fix. She's a born painter, and might be a very important one. But Miss Imbrie must eat. And she also prefers a roof over her head to being constantly out in the rain and snow.
Tracy: Food and a roof.

View Quote Tracy: I have the most wonderful little house in Unionville. It's up on a hill with a view that would knock you silly. I'm never there except in the hunting season, and not much then, and I'd be so happy to know that it was of some real use to someone....There's a brook and a small lake, no size really, and a patch of woods, and in any kind of weather, it's the most wonderful --- Well anyhow, I'm, I'm so delighted that I can offer it to you...And don't think I'd come trooping in every minute because I wouldn't. I'd-I'd never come except when expressly asked to.
Mike: Well, you see the idea of artists depending upon a patron Lady Bountiful has more or less gone out.
Tracy: Oh! I see. That wasn't especially kind of you, Mr. Connor. I'm sorry to have seemed patronizing.

View Quote Dexter: Orange juice, certainly.
Tracy: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whiskey and whiskeys.
Dexter: No, no, no, no. I've just changed their color, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. They're more becoming to me. How about you, Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you? Alcohol, I mean.
Mike: Oh, a little.
Dexter: A little, 'little.' And you a writer? I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know one time, I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.
Tracy: Dexter, would you mind doing something for me?...Get the heck out of here.
Dexter: Oh my dear, Red. I couldn't do that. It wouldn't be fair to you. You need me too much.
Tracy: Would you mind telling me just what it is you're hanging around for? [Mike begins to walk away] Oh no, no, no. Please don't go, Mr. Connor.
Dexter: 'Oh no, no, no. Please don't go Mr. Connor.' As a writer, this ought to be right up your street.
Tracy: Don't miss a word.

View Quote Dexter: I never saw you looking better, Red. You're getting that fine, tawny look.
Tracy: Oh, we're going to talk about me, are we? Goodie.
Dexter: It's astonishing what money can do for people, don't you agree, Mr. Connor? Not too much, you know - just more than enough. Now take Tracy for example. (There's) never a blow that hasn't been softened for her. Never a blow that won't be softened. As a matter of fact, she's even changed her shape - she was a dumpy little thing at one time.
Tracy: Only as it happens, I'm not interested in myself, for the moment.
Dexter: Not interested in yourself! You're fascinated, Red. You're far and away your favorite person in the world.
Tracy: Dexter, in case you don't know it -
Dexter: Of course, Mr. Connor, she's a girl who's generous to a fault.
Tracy: To a fault, Mr. Connor.
Dexter: Except to other people's faults. For instance, she never had any understanding of my deep and gorgeous thirst.
Tracy: That was your problem.
Dexter: Granted. But you took on that problem with me when you took me, Red. You were no help-mate there. You were a scold.
Tracy: It was disgusting. It made you so unattractive.
Dexter: A weakness, sure, and strength is her religion, Mr. Connor. She finds human imperfection unforgiveable. And when I gradually discovered that my relationship to her was supposed to be not that of a loving husband and a good companion, but - [He turns away from her] Oh, never mind.
Tracy: Say it.
Dexter: But that of a kind of high priest to a virgin goddess, then my drinks grew deeper and more frequent, that's all. [Mike slides off his chair and leaves them.]
Tracy: I never considered you as that, nor myself.
Dexter: You did without knowing it. Oh, and the night that you got drunk on champagne and climbed out on the roof and stood there, NAKED, with your arms out to the moon, wailing like a banshee - [Dexter laughs at the thought.]
Tracy: I told you I never had the slightest recollection of doing any such thing.
Dexter: I know. You drew a blank. You wanted to. Mr. Connor, what would you... [He turns and notices Mike has gone] Oh.
Tracy: A nice story for spies, incidentally.
Dexter: Too bad we can't supply photographs of you on the roof.

View Quote Dexter: [about marrying George] How in the world could you even think of it?
Tracy: Because he is everything you're not. He's been poor. He's had to work and he's had to fight for everything. And I love him, as I never even began to love you.
Dexter: Maybe so, but I doubt it. I think he's just a swing from me. But it's too violent a swing. Kittredge is no great tower of strength, you know, Tracy. He's just a tower.
Tracy: You hardly know him.
Dexter: To hardly know him is to know him well. And perhaps it offends my vanity to have anyone who is even remotely my wife re-marry so obviously beneath her.
Tracy: How dare you! Any of you in this day and age use such an idiotic...
Dexter: I'm talking about the difference in mind and spirit...Kittredge is not for you.
Tracy: You bet he's for me. He's a great man and a good man. Already, he's of national importance.
Dexter: You sound like Spy Magazine talking. But whatever he is, toots, you'll have to stick. He'll give you no out as I did.
Tracy: I won't require one.
Dexter: I suppose you'd still be attractive to any man of spirit, though. There's something engaging about it, this goddess business. There's something more challenging to the male than the, uh, more obvious charms.
Tracy: Really?
Dexter: Really. We're very vain, you know - 'This citadel can and shall be taken, and I'm the boy to do it.'
Tracy: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of a sudden.
Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.
Tracy: Is that all?
Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.
Tracy: So help me, Dexter, if you say another word, I'll...
Dexter: I'm through, Red. For the moment, I've had my say.

View Quote George: You know, we're gonna represent something, Tracy, you and I in our home, something straight, sound, and fine. Then perhaps your friend Mr. Haven will be somewhat less condescending.
Tracy: George, you, you don't really mind him, do you? I mean, the fact of him...I mean...that he ever was my lord and master. That we ever were...
George: I don't believe he ever was, Tracy, not really. I don't believe that anyone ever was - or ever will be. That's the wonderful thing about you, Tracy.
Tracy: What? How?
George: Well, you're like some marvelous, distant, well, queen, I guess. You're so cool and fine and - and always so much your own. There's a kind of beautiful purity about you, Tracy, like, like a statue...
Tracy: George -
George: Oh, it's grand, Tracy. It's what everybody feels about you. It's what I first worshipped you for from afar.
Tracy: George, listen -
George: First, now, and always! Only from a little nearer now, eh, darling!
Tracy: I-I don't want to be worshipped. I want to be loved!
George: Well, you're that too, Tracy. Oh, you're that all right.
Tracy: I mean really loved.
George: But that goes without saying, Tracy.
Tracy: No. No, now it's you who doesn't see what I mean.

View Quote Tracy: Of course, inasmuch as you let us in for it in the first place.
Mr. Lord: Oh, do keep that note out of your voice, Tracy. It's very unattractive.
Tracy: Oh? How does your dancer friend talk? Or does she purr?
Margaret: Tracy!
Mr. Lord: Oh, it's quite all right, Margaret.
Tracy: Sweet and low, I suppose. Dulcet, very lady-like. You've got a heck of a nerve to come back here in your best-head-of-the-family manner and make stands and strike attitudes and criticize my fiancee and give orders and mess things up generally...
Margaret: Stop it instantly!
Tracy: I can't help it. It's sickening. As if he'd done nothing at all!
Mr. Lord: Which happens to be the truth.
Margaret: Anyway, it's not your affair, Tracy, if it concerns anyone. Well actually, I don't know whom it concerns except your father.
Mr. Lord: That's very wise of you, Margaret. What most wives fail to realize is that their husband's philandering has nothing whatever to do with them.
Tracy: Oh? Then, what has it to do with?
Mr. Lord: A reluctance to grow old, I think. I suppose the best mainstay a man can have as he gets along in years is a daughter - the right kind of daughter.
Tracy: How sweet!
Mr. Lord: No, no. I'm talking seriously about something I've thought over thoroughly. I've had to. I think a devoted young girl gives a man the illusion that youth is still his.
Tracy: Very important, I suppose.
Mr. Lord: Oh, very, very. Because without her, he might be inclined to go out in search of his youth. And that's just as important to him as it is to any woman. But with a girl of his own full of warmth for him, full of foolish, unquestioning, uncritical affection -
Tracy: None of which I've got -
Mr. Lord: None. You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it to. You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential - an understanding heart. And without that, you might just as well be made of bronze.
Tracy: That's an awful thing to say to anyone.
Mr. Lord: Yes, it is indeed.
Tracy: So, I'm to blame for Tina Mara, am I?
Mr. Lord: To a certain extent, I expect you are.
Tracy: You coward.
Mr. Lord: No. But better that than a prig or a perennial spinster, however many marriages.
Margaret: Seth, that's too much.
Mr. Lord: I'm afraid it's not enough, Margaret. I'm afraid nothing is.
Tracy: What, what did you say I was?
Mr. Lord: Do you want me to repeat it?
Tracy: 'A prig and a...' You mean, you think I think I'm some kind of a goddess or something?
Mr. Lord: If your ego wants it that way, yes. Also, you've been talking like a jealous woman.
Tracy: 'A...' What's the matter with everyone all at once, anyhow?

View Quote Mrs. Lord: I think that dress hikes up a little behind.
Dinah: No, it's me that does.

View Quote Tracy: In China we'd be married by now - or perhaps it's only yesterday.
George: I'm going home after this dance.
Tracy: There was a Chinese poet who was drowned while trying to kiss the moon in the river. He was drunk.
George: I'd say as much.
Tracy: But he wrote beautiful poetry.