The Lady Eve quotes

View Quote Charles: I think that if there's one time in your life to be careful, to weigh every pro and con, that this is the time.
Eve: Oh yes, you, you can't be too careful.
Charles: That's right. Now, you might think that having known you such a short time...
Eve: I-I feel I've known you always.
Charles: That's the way I feel about you. I don't just see you here in front of the sunset. But you seem to go way back. I see you here but at the same time, further away and still further away, and way, way back in a, a long place like a...
Eve: Like a forest glade.
Charles: That's right. How did you guess?
Eve: Because, that's where I see you always. We held hands, way, way back.
Charles: Why, that's remarkable. That's like telepathy.
Eve: I can read many of your thoughts.
Charles: Then, I need hardly tell you of the doubts I've had before I brought myself to speak like this. You see Eve, you're so beautiful, you're so fine, you're so...I don't deserve you.
Eve: Oh but you do, Charles. If anybody ever deserved me, you do. So richly.
Charles: Eve!
Eve: Charles!

View Quote Charles: I was just gonna say I could imagine a life with you being a series of ups and downs, lights and shadows, some irritation, but very much happiness.
Jean: Why Hopsie! Are you proposing to me so soon?
Charles: No, of course not. I'm just...
Jean: Then you ought to be more careful. People have been sued for much less.
Charles: Not by girls like you.
Jean: Don't you know it's dangerous to trust people you don't know very well?
Charles: But I know you very well.
Jean: No, I mean the people you haven't known very long.
Charles: I've known you a long time in a way.

View Quote Charles: I won't conceal from you that I wish this hadn't happened but it has...and so it has. A girl of sixteen is practically an idiot anyway, so I can't very well blame you for something that was practically done by somebody else. I want to thank you for being so frank. The name of Angus will never cross my lips again and I hope that you will do likewise. Now, let us smile and be as we were.
Eve: I knew you'd be that way. I knew it the first moment I saw you standing beside me - I knew you'd be both husband and father to me, I knew I could trust and confide in you. I suppose that's why I fell in love with you. I wonder if now would be the time to tell you about - Herman?

View Quote Charles: I've just understood something. You see, every time I've looked at you here on the boat it wasn't only here I saw you. You seemed to go way back. I know that isn't clear but I, I saw you here and at the same time further away, and then still further away and then very small, like converging perspective lines. No, that isn't it, it's like, like people following each other in a forest glade. Only way back there you were a little girl with short dresses and your hair falling to your shoulders and a little boy is standing with you holding your hand, and in the middle distance I'm still with you, not holding your hand anymore because it isn't manly, but wanting to. And then still further, we look terrible, you with your legs like a colt and mine like a calf. What I'm trying to say is, only I'm not a poet, I'm an ophiologist, I've always loved you. I mean I've never loved anyone but you. I know that sounds dull as a drug store novel, and what I see inside I'll never be able to cast into words, but that's what I mean. I wish we were married and on our honeymoon now.
Jean: So do I. But it isn't as simple as all that, Hopsie. I'm terribly in love, and you seem to be too, so one of us has to think and try and keep things clear. And maybe I can do that better than you can. They say a moonlit deck is a woman's business office.

View Quote Charles: Snakes are my life, in a way.
Jean: What a life!
Charles: I suppose it does sound sorta silly. I mean, I suppose I shoulda married and settled down. I imagine my father always wanted me to. As a matter of fact, he's told me so rather plainly. I just never cared for the brewing business.
Jean: Oh, you say that's why you've never married?
Charles: Oh no. It's just I've never met her. I suppose she's around somewhere in the world.
Jean: It would be too bad if you never bumped into each other.
Charles: Well...
Jean: I-I suppose you know what she looks like and everything.
Charles: I-I think so.
Jean: I'll bet she looks like Marguerite in Faust.
Charles: Oh no, she isn't, I mean, she hasn't, she's not as bulky as an opera singer.
Jean: Oh. How are her teeth?
Charles: Hunh?
Jean: Well, you should always pick one out with good teeth. It saves expense later.
Charles: Oh, now you're kidding me.
Jean: Not badly. You have a right to have an ideal. Oh, I guess we all have one.
Charles: What does yours look like?
Jean: He's a little short guy with lots of money.
Charles: Why short?
Jean: What does it matter if he's rich? It's so he'll look up to me. So I'll be his ideal.
Charles: That's a funny kind of reason.
Jean: Well, look who's reasoning. And when he takes me out to dinner, he'll never add up the check and he won't smoke greasy cigars or use grease on his hair. And, oh yes, he, he won't do card tricks.
Charles: Oh.
Jean: Oh, it's not that I mind your doing card tricks, Hopsie. It's just that you naturally wouldn't want your ideal to do card tricks.
Charles: I shouldn't think that kind of ideal was so difficult to find.
Jean: Oh he isn't. That's why he's my ideal. What's the sense of having one if you can't ever find him? Mine is a practical ideal you can find two or three of in every barber shop - getting the works.
Charles: Why don't you marry one of them?
Jean: Why should I marry anybody that looked like that? When I marry, it's gonna be somebody I've never seen before. I mean I won't know what he looks like or where he'll come from of what he'll be. I want him to sort of - take me by surprise.
Charles: Like a burglar.
Jean: That's right. And the night will be heavy with perfume. And I'll hear a step behind me and somebody breathing heavily, and then...[She moans and sighs softly as she stretches back on the chaise] You'd better go to bed, Hopsie. I think I can sleep peacefully now.
Charles: I wish I could say the same.
Jean: Why Hopsie!

View Quote Charles: Would you care to come in... and see Emma?
Jean: That's a new one, isn't it?

View Quote Charles: You're certainly a funny girl for anybody to meet who's just been up the Amazon for a year.
Jean: Good thing you weren't up there two years.

View Quote Colonel: ...now she's honeymooning on a train with a man she hates.
Gerald: Maybe she's gonna shoot him.
Colonel: She's afraid of guns.
Gerald: Maybe she's gonna push him out of the window.
Colonel: No. You can't open a window on a train.

View Quote Colonel: [after Charles announces his intent to propose to Jean] Well, it was the last thing that entered my mind. Bless my soul. Let's have a drink on that...I'm all emotional. To say that I am thunderstruck is an understatement. She'll probably turn you down, but anyway...
Charles: I intend to make her as happy as I can.
Colonel: She asks very little.
Charles: I suppose you know I'm very rich.
Colonel: Aren't we all?
Charles: I'm sorry in a way because it would be so pleasant to buy lovely non-sensities for somebody who never had them.
Colonel: Wouldn't it? That's the tragedy of the rich. They don't need anything.

View Quote Colonel: I hope you'll never be unhappy.
Jean: I hope I'll never be more unhappy than I am right now.

View Quote Colonel: Well, it certainly took you long enough to come back in the same outfit.
Jean: I'm lucky to have this on. Mr. Pike has been up a river for a year.

View Quote Gerald: I can't understand how that horse ran fifth!
Jean: There were only five horses in the race.

View Quote Jean: I don't see why I have to do all the dirty work. There must be plenty of rich old dames waiting for you to push them around.
Colonel: You find them, I'll push them.
Jean: Boy, would I like to see you give some old harpie the three in one!
Colonel: Don't be vulgar, Jane. Let us be crooked, but never common.

View Quote Jean: I think I'm in love with the poor fish, snakes and all...He's kinda touched something in my heart and I'd give a lot to be, well I mean I, I'm going to be exactly the way he thinks I am, the way he'd like me to be.
Colonel: I'm sure that's very noble, Jean, and I wish you all the happiness in the world - all the little boys and all the little girls you want.
Jean: And you'll go straight too, won't you, Harry?
Colonel: Straight to where?
Jean: Oh, you know what I mean. You can come and live with us, and you too Gerald - part of the time, anyway. We'll probably have a very beautiful place. Think how peaceful you can be.
Colonel: Playing cribbage with Gerald. I can just see myself roaming around your estate with a weedsticker and fifty cents a week. And a pair of new slippers for Christmas. The trouble with people who reform is they always want to rain on everybody else's parade too. You tend to your knitting. I'll play the cards.
Jean: Not with him.
Colonel: Children don't respect their parents any more.

View Quote Jean: Oh darling, hold me tight! Oh, you don't know what you've done to me.
Charles: I'm terribly sorry.
Jean: Oh, that's all right.
Charles: I wouldn't have frightened you for anything in the world. I mean if there's anyone in the world I wouldn't have wanted to - it's you.
Jean: You're very sweet. Don't let me go.