Archbishop [arguing for war]
It is for our faith and for our God.
God is being invoked in many lands these days, Your Grace. What about the enemy's God?
Queen Christina
Greta Garbo · 21 quotes
Don Antonio
John Gilbert · 8 quotes
Most scenes together: Queen Christina & Don Antonio (8)
Queen Christina quotes
Page 1 of 2 Archbishop [about Charles]
He at least is no opportunist...I look at you and I look at a stranger, a stranger whom I do not altogether like.
Magnus I grant you your preferences if you love me.
Love you? I wonder now, Magnus, if I have ever loved you.
Magnus I am your destiny, Christina.
Are you? I long to escape my destiny.
Magnus You will long to return to it.
Antonio, I feel just the same.
I don't. I feel unlucky being the thirteenth.
Oh, but I was lying, terribly. And now you don't love me anymore?
Don't despair, your Majesty. My master, the King of Spain, has the honor of asking your hand in marriage. It isn't pleasant to betray one's King, to dishonor him in a far country.
But we'll go afterward, Ebba.
Ebba Oh, you always say that, but at the end of the day, you're never free to go anywhere. You're surrounded by musty old papers and musty old men and I can't get near you.
Today, I'll dispose of them by sundown, I promise you, and we'll go away for two or three days in the country. Wouldn't you like that?
Ebba Oh, I'd love it.
I have imagined happiness but happiness you cannot imagine. Happiness you must feel, joy you must feel. Oh, and this great joy I feel now. Antonio.
What?
This is how the Lord must have felt when he first beheld the finished world with all his creatures breathing, living.
We might have been born in different centuries.
No, I never would have permitted that. We're inevitable, don't you feel it?
I feel it. But you, how can you be so sure? You know me so little.
That's true. There's a mystery in you.
Is there not in every human being?
Yes. Tell me, you said you would, why did you come to this inn dressed as a man?
In my home, I'm very constrained. Everything is arranged very formally.
A conventional household.
Very. I like to get away from it sometimes, to be free.
I can understand that.
You're going to court. What if the Queen keeps you there?
Let her try.
If half of the Queen's reputation is well-founded...
After you, she'll be tiresome. Ah, to have found anyone in this wilderness would have been miracle enough but to have found you - ah, this is too improbable. I don't believe in you. You're an illusion. You'll vanish before my eyes.
I'll give up my room to you gladly.
Give up? I wouldn't hear of it.
Well, the truth is, uh, please forgive me sir, but since I was little, since I was a child, I've always disliked sharing my room with anyone. So you take the room and I'll go elsewhere.
I wouldn't hear of it. There isn't another free bed in the inn.
Well, I'll sleep before the fire.
Am I so unpresentable? Do my manners disgust you? Does my speech bore you? If you find me so unbearable, forgive me for having imposed myself on you for so long. Good night, sir.
Please, I...
Say no more about it. I shall sit before the fire all night.
Oh no, no, I-you couldn't. I wouldn't, uh... You shall share my room with me.
Oh, thank you very much. I'll be delighted. If you're ever in Spain, I'll return the hospitality.
There is too great a burden you put on me. I have grown up in a great man's shadow. All my life I've been a symbol, a symbol of eternal changelessness, an abstraction. A human being is mortal and changeable with desires and impurities, hopes and despairs. I'm tired of being a symbol, Chancellor. I long to be a human being, this longing I cannot suppress.
Chancellor
And yet you must, you will. His hand is upon you, the King's.
I have always listened to you with awe, Oxenstierna...Yet something in me cries out that this cannot be true, that one must live for oneself. After all Chancellor, one's own life is all one has.
Chancellor
Yes, your Majesty, that is all one has. Therefore, you must give it up to your duty. Greatness demands all.
Am I great, Chancellor? I feel so little and helpless and futile.
Chancellor
Yes, your Majesty, when you are alone. But tomorrow when this great hall is filled with the pride of your realm, you will meet the occasion, you will do your duty, you will marry Prince Charles.
Duty. Duty.
Chancellor
My heritage, your Majesty, and yours.
This eternal talk about Charles. I cannot tell you how it wears me. I do not see eye-to-eye with Charles about anything...There are varieties of heroes. He's a hero with fighting and fighting bores me. His only gift is with a sword.
Chancellor
The sword has made Sweden great, your Majesty.
Yes, do we not exalt that gift too much, Chancellor?
Chancellor
Ah, you cannot remake the world, your Majesty.
Why not? Look, Chancellor, the philosophers remake it, the artists remake it, the scientists remake it now, why not we, we the power. The people follow blindly the generals who lead them to destruction. Will they not follow us? We'll lead them beyond themselves where there's grace and beauty, gaiety and freedom.
Chancellor
Europe is an armed camp, your Majesty, not utopia peopled with shepherds.
But Chancellor... [She looks out the window] Snow again, eternal snow.
Chancellor
Your Majesty, it is for Sweden. It is your duty.
Why is it my duty? My days and nights are given up to the service of the state. I'm so cramped with duty that to be able to read a book, I have to rise in the middle of the night. I serve the people with all my thoughts, with all my energy, with all my dreams, waking and sleeping. I do not wish to marry and you cannot force me.
Chancellor
You must give Sweden an heir.
Not by Charles, Chancellor.
Chancellor
You are Sweden's Queen. You are your father's daughter.
Must we live for the dead?
Chancellor
For the great dead, yes your Majesty.
Snow is like a wide sea. One could go out and be lost in it and forget the world and oneself.
Chancellor
There are rumors that your Majesty is planning a foreign marriage.
They are baseless.
Chancellor
But your Majesty, you cannot die an old maid.
I have no intention to, Chancellor. I shall die a bachelor!
[mistaking her for a man]
Have you ever traveled? Have you ever been far from home? Have you ever been homesick?
I've never been out of Sweden.
Then you don't know what it is to be homesick. You don't know what it means to feel that sense of loss, the pain of nostalgia.
One can feel nostalgia for places one has never seen.
Yes, that's quite true. Young man, that's the second time I've underestimated you...Imagine in this ice-cap finding someone who knows Spain. You understand I admire your country. It's rugged and strong and impressive. It has all the virile qualities...At home, our people are less hearty. They're a bit more graceful. It's all a question of climate. You can't serenade a woman in a snowstorm. All the graces and the arts of love - the elaborate approaches that go to make the game of love amusing - can only be practiced in those countries that quiver in the heat of the sun, in the still languorous nights where every breeze caresses with amour. Love, as we understand it, is a technique that must be developed in hot countries.
Sounds glamorous and yet...somewhat mechanical. Evidently, you Spaniards make too much fuss about a simple, elemental thing like love. We Swedes are more direct.
Well, that's civilization. To disguise the elemental with the glamorous. A great love has to be nourished, has to be...
Don't you believe in its possibility?
In its possibility, yes, but not in its existence. A great love, a perfect love is an illusion. It is the golden fable of which we all dream. In an ordinary life, it doesn't happen. In ordinary life, one must be content with less.
So young, and yet so disillusioned. Young man, you're cynical.
Not at all, merely realistic.
What are you doing?
I have been memorizing the room. In the future, in my memory, I shall live a great deal in this room.
You wait. I'll show you the whole living world.
Why did you go out of your way to make me ridiculous? All that idiotic talk of love and beauty that made my heart beat, and made me dream like a fool and talk like one.
I thought you would understand when you saw me again what had happened. That it had been so enchanting to be a woman, not a Queen, just a woman in a man's arms.
Yes, if you'd left my heart alone.
But I fell in love with you. I love you Antonio. Look! [She pulls a coin from her bodice] The coin you gave me for helping you. I've slept with it in my hand each night. Forgive me for being a Queen.
What do you want of me?
What do I want? What? I want back that room in the inn, the snow that fell, the warm fire and the sweet hours, beloved one.
Elsa [To Christina]
Shall I help you off with your boots, sir?
No thank you...
You're very pretty, Elsa. Are you also good?
Elsa When I do not like a man, yes.
That's true virtue.
The basis of all morality in a sentence.
Elsa Can I get you anything, sir?
No, thank you.
Elsa The master says you're to have everything you need.
Hmmm.
Elsa If you should need anything, my room is at the end of the passage.
She prefers you. You have the better chance.
I'd give her up gladly if you're interested.
No, I'm not interested. Well, don't you think since we're going to share the same bed we should be introduced?
Lord Chancellor
They clamor for a Swedish marriage for your majesty. They clamor for an heir of Swedish blood.
In short, Chancellor, they clamor.
[at age 6, after her father has died]
Good lords and Swedish men. We Christina, by grace of God, Queen of the Swedes, the Goths and Vandals, promises you to be a good and just king, to protect you all, and to guard the kingdom as our father did, to wisely and with God's help, to keep the standard as we've received it from our fathers. Concerning this war which we are bitterly waging, we promise...we promise...
Lord Chancellor
[whispering]
...to wage it with courage.
We promise to win it! I bless you all.
[Count Magnus has mortally wounded Don Antonio in a duel]
Have you said goodbye to your country?
Yes, to everything but you.
How sweet your eyes are.
Shhh, you mustn't talk.
When the wind is with us, we sail.
Yes.
Spain - my home is on a white cliff overlooking the sea. You'll never leave me, will you...?
No, never.
Your Majesty.
Shhh, you must rest. Rest.