A Good Woman

Lord Darlington:
I like America. Name me another society that's gone from barbarism to decadence without bothering to create a civilization in between.

Lord Darlington:
I like America. Name me another society that's gone from barbarism to decadence without bothering to create a civilization in between.

Tuppy:
A tribute to American efficiency.

Lord Darlington:
Marital bliss is a terrible burden to place on two people, Tuppy. Sometimes a third person is needed to lighten the load.

Tuppy:
You're so fond of gossip you don't give the truth a chance to put its pants on.

Contessa Lucchino:
It's not the truth that's going around without pants, caro Tuppy.

Contessa Lucchino:
You mustn't take it personally. Mrs. Erlynne is one of those women that attract men like a bee to a flame. Eh?

Meg Windermere:
A moth.

Contessa Lucchino:
Bee to a moth. Mmm.

Contessa Lucchino:
Undying love is like the ghost in your villa. Everybody talks about it, but try and find one person who has seen it.

Meg Windermere:
How could he?

Contessa Lucchino:
Every man is born truthful and every man dies a liar. Now whatever you do you mustn't make a scene. It's too unpleasant and you waste energy.

Meg Windermere:
No, of course not. I wouldn't.

Contessa Lucchino:
Crying is the refuge of plain women. [smiling brightly] Pretty women go shopping.

Dumby:
Do you think she'd look at you if you were poor?

Tuppy:
Do you think I'd look at her if she were ugly? Fair's fair, exchange rates and so forth. Well I know she's had her this and her that... but if a man can tolerate his own past... why not a past in his wife?

Dumby:
Women inspire us to great things.

Cecil:
Then somehow prevent us from doing any of them.

Cecil:
Men don't trust women. Women don't trust women. No one trusts women. It's what binds the Catholic and the Hindu.

Dumby:
Bigamy is having more than one wife too many.

Lord Darlington:
So is monogamy.

Lord Darlington:
I've thought very seriously of marrying. That's why I'm still single.

Lord Darlington:
Gossip is alright. It's the moralizing that is in poor taste.

Contessa Lucchino:
If everyone knew what everyone said about each other there wouldn't be four friends in the world.

Contessa Lucchino:
My own business bores me. I much prefer other peoples.

Mrs. Erlynne:
Women don't want to be understood. They want to be loved.

Tuppy:
We've all got a couple of skeleton in the closet.

Mrs. Erlynne:
If they are going to rattle, they may as well dance.

Mrs. Erlynne:
[to Meg Windermere] Go ahead, step over love to pick up pride and guilt. What will that trade be worth in a year?... in twenty?

Mrs. Erlynne:
Some women bring happiness wherever they go. Others, whenever they go.

Dumby:
One should always have a proper basis for marriage. A mutual...

Lord Darlington:
Misunderstanding?

Dumby:
Exactly.

Lord Darlington:
I find the best way to keep my word is never to give it.

Mrs. Erlynne:
I need an opinion from home. Now be honest. Would you wear it?

Meg Windermere:
Well, it doesn't leave much to the imagination, does it?

Mrs. Erlynne:
That depends on the imagination. Some men have more than others.

Meg Windermere:
Can you imagine what people would say?

Mrs. Erlynne:
Well, if we're always guided by other people's thoughts what's the point of having our own?

Lord Darlington:
All paying jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Robert Windemere:
You never had a paying job.

Lord Darlington:
I rest my case. Cultivated leisure is man's true calling.

Lady Plymdale:
Opera makes me feel so romantic.

Cecil:
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Lord Darlington:
All of which, mind you, is time well spent in my book. So, yes, I take your point, I can't argue. At the club, we'd be with other people. Afraid we'll be seen? Set the chins wagging? Do you know what I find worse than being talked about? Not being talked about at all.

Contessa Lucchino:
And another thing, your Mrs. Erlynne has no principles at all.

Tuppy:
I like people more than principles.

Alessandra:
Now I see uncle. He's with the American woman.

Contessa Lucchino:
Too much rouge and not enough clothing. She's appealing to the worst in the poor man.

Lord Darlington:
It's what women do best.

Tuppy:
Every experience is of value and whatever you say about marriage it certainly is an experience.

Mrs. Erlynne:
People call something an experience they usually mean it was a mistake.

Tuppy:
Aren't you clever?

Mrs. Erlynne:
I read it somewhere.

Tuppy:
I like a good read myself. Nothing too laborious. I don't want to tamper with natural ignorance.

Tuppy:
No, I think I'll do very well to marry you.

Mrs. Erlynne:
How very practical.

Tuppy:
Oh, I've begun too many romances out of sentiment. They always end in settlement.

Mrs. Erlynne:
I was married - I didn't take to it.

Tuppy:
People change. You might feel differently.

Mrs. Erlynne:
When I think of it, I think of a room where you can't open a window, where there is no window. Every day you wake up and the room is smaller. You don't notice, not at first. It happens slowly. In inches. Then one morning, you open your eyes and the room is so small you... you can't move. You can't take a breath. You have to get out. You can't think of anything else. Or anyone else.

Tuppy:
You married the wrong man, that's all.

Mrs. Erlynne:
He married the wrong woman.

Tuppy:
Every saint has past, every sinner has a future.

Tuppy:
I'm going to ask her to marry me if she'll have me.

Dumby:
You know... you know why they call it an altar, Tuppy? It's where they make human sacrifices.

Dumby:
He's proposing to her. It will be his third time up the aisle.

Cecil:
Hope trumps experience, Dumby. It's God's joke on the human race.

Mrs. Erlynne:
Keep him out all night. Get him drunk if you have to. Just don't let him come home.

Tuppy:
Why? What? What?

Mrs. Erlynne:
I like you, I do. But if this is going to work between us, you can't do that.

Tuppy:
Do what?

Mrs. Erlynne:
"Where? What? Why?" I can't always explain myself to myself let alone anyone else.

Tuppy:
Good for you - takes the pressure off. Nine times out of ten, men don't give two pins about why they just feel obliged to take an interest.

Mrs. Erlynne:
It takes practice and skill to live without regret. A marriage takes your whole heart. Selfish people can't pull it off, but you're not that.

Cecil:
Devilish women are a bother, and good ones are a bore.

Cecil:
My dear Tuppy, in this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it. The last is very much the worst. The last is a real tragedy.

Meg Windermere:
I'm going to tell him the truth.

Mrs. Erlynne:
What you did is your mistake. Your sack of bricks. You carry it. You don't confess and hand it off to someone who loves you.

Meg Windermere:
I swear on my mother.

Mrs. Erlynne:
Pardon?

Meg Windermere:
She's my guardian angel. My whole life I wanted to be like her.

Mrs. Erlynne:
I'm sure she wouldn't hold you to such a standard.

Meg Windermere:
She'd be so ashamed of me now.

Mrs. Erlynne:
We all straddle the abyss, Mrs Windemere. If we never look down, how can we know who we are? A mother could never be ashamed of a daughter who didn't fall in.

Cecil:
Men advance, women resist. We retreat and they block our escape. We can't win.

Lord Darlington:
The sexes will never understand each other.

Cecil:
Only because they take such pains to deceive each other.

Mrs. Erlynne:
If you go out the back, you'll never come in the front... A lady always leaves the way she came.