Philadelphia Story, The (1940) quotes

View Quote Mike: I don't think you're being fair to me, Mr. Kidd.
Kidd: No?
Mike: No. You're treating me like you treat all your other writers.

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 Mike: The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
Tracy: You're a snob, Connor.
Mike: No doubt, no doubt...Tracy. You can't marry that guy.
Tracy: George? I'm going to. Why, why not?
Mike: Well, I don't know. I thought I'd be for it at first, but you just don't seem to match up.
Tracy: Then the fault's with me.
Mike: Well, maybe so, but all the same now, you can't do it.
Tracy: No?
Mike: No.
Tracy: Come around about noon tomorrow. I mean today. Snob.
Mike: What do ya mean, snob?
Tracy: You're the worst kind there is. An intellectual snob. You made up your mind awfully young, it seems to me.
Mike: Well, thirty's about time to make up your mind. And I'm nothing of the sort, not Mr. Connor.
Tracy: The time to make up your mind about people - is never. Yes you are, and a complete one.
Mike: You're quite a girl, aren't you?
Tracy: You think?
Mike: Yeah, I know.
Tracy: Thank you, Professor. I don't think I'm exceptional.
Mike: You are though.
Tracy: I know any number like me. You ought to get around more.
Mike: In the upper class. No, no. No thank you.
Tracy: You're just a mass of prejudices, aren't you? You're so much thought and so little feeling, Professor.
Mike: Oh I am, am I?
Tracy: Yes you am, are you! Your intolerance infuriates me. I should think that of all people, a writer would need tolerance. The fact is, you'll never - you can't be a first-rate writer or a first-rate human being until you've learned to have some small regard for human fra...[Suddenly, she stops, her eyes widen, and she realizes that she is repeating Dexter's words. She turns] Aren't the geraniums pretty, Professor? Is it not a handsome day that begins, Professor?
Mike: All right, lay off that, Professor.
Tracy: Yes, Professor.
Mike: You've got all the arrogance of your class, all right, haven't you?
Tracy: Halt. What have classes to do with it? What do they matter except for the people in them? George comes from the so-called lower class. Dexter from the upper...Upper and lower, my eye. I'll take the lower, thanks.
Mike: If you can't get a drawing room.
Tracy: What do you mean by that?
Mike: My mistake.
Tracy: Decidedly. You're insulting.
Mike: I'm sorry.
Tracy: Oh, don't apologize.
Mike: Well, who's apologizing?
Tracy: I never knew such a man.
Mike: You wouldn't be likely to, dear, not from where you sit.
Tracy: Talk about arrogance.
Mike: Tracy.
Tracy: What do you want?
Mike: You're wonderful. [She laughs] There's a magnificence in you, Tracy.
Tracy: Now, I'm getting self-conscious. It's funny. I- Mike? Let's...
Mike: Yeah?
Tracy: I don't know - go up I guess, it's late.
Mike: A magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts.
Tracy: I don't seem to you made of bronze?
Mike: [takes her in his arms] No, you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You've got tears in your eyes.
Tracy: Shut up, shut up. Oh Mike. Keep talking, keep talking. Talk, will you?
Mike: No, no. I-I've stopped.
Tracy: Why? Has your mind taken hold again, dear Professor?
Mike: That's really all I am to you, is it?
Tracy: Of course, Professor.
Mike: Are you sure?
Tracy: Why, yes, yes, of course...
[Mike's forceful, passionate kiss stops her next word. She takes the melodramatic kiss and returns it]
Tracy: Golly. [She kisses him a second time] Golly Moses. All of a sudden, I got the shakes.
Mike: It can't be anything like love, can it?
Tracy: No! No! It mustn't be. It can't.
Mike: Would it be inconvenient?
Tracy: Terribly. Anyway, I know it isn't. Oh Mike, we're out of our minds.
Mike: And right into our hearts.
Tracy: That ought to have music.
Mike: It does, doesn't it? Tracy, you're so lovely.
Tracy: Oh, it's as if my insteps were melting away. What is it? Have I got feet of clay or something?
Mike: Tracy...
Tracy: It's not far to the pool. It's just over the lawn and in the birch-grove. It'll be lovely now.
Mike: Tracy, you're tremendous...
Tracy: Put me in your pocket, Mike.

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

View Quote Tracy: [about Dexter's wedding gift] It was beautiful - and sweet, Dex.
Dexter: Yes, yes. She was quite a boat, the True Love, wasn't she?
Tracy: Was, and is.
Dexter: My, she was yar.
Tracy: She was yar alright. I wasn't, was I?
Dexter: Not very. Oh, you were good at the bright work, though.
Tracy: I made her shine. Where is she now?
Dexter: I'm gonna sell it to Ruth Watrous.
Tracy: You're gonna sell the True Love, for money?
Dexter: Sure...Oh well, what's it matter? When you're through with a boat, you're through. Besides, it was only comfortable for two people. Unless you want her.
Tracy: No, no I don't want her.
Dexter: Well, I'm designing another one anyway, along more practical lines.
Tracy: What'll you call her?
Dexter: I thought the True Love II. What do you think?
Tracy: Dexter, if you call any boat that, I promise you I'll blow you and it out of the water. I'll tell you what you can call her if you like...in fond remembrance of me, the Easy Virtue.
Dexter: Shut up, Red! I can't have you thinking things like that about yourself.
Tracy: Well, what am I supposed to think when I - Oh I don't know. I don't know anything any more.
Dexter: That sounds very hopeful, Red. That sounds just fine.

View Quote Tracy: [about George] You hardly know him.
Dexter: To hardly know him is to know him well.

View Quote Tracy: [after Dexter has proposed] Dexter, are you sure?
Dexter: Not in the least. But I'll risk it. Will you?
Tracy: You bet! You didn't do it just to soften the blow?
Dexter: No.
Tracy: Nor to save my face?
Dexter: Oh, it's a nice little face.
Tracy: Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now, I promise to be yar.
Dexter: Be whatever you like, you're my redhead.

View Quote Tracy: [reading George's letter to Dexter, Mike, and Liz] My dear Tracy: I want you to know that you will always be my friend, but your conduct last night was so shocking to my ideals of womanhood...that my attitude toward you and the prospect of a happy and useful life together has been changed materially. Your breach of common decency...
[George enters, criticising her for reading his letter out loud]
Tracy: It's only a letter from a friend. They're my friends too. [continues to read] ...certainly entitles me to a full explanation before going through with our proposed marriage. In the light of day, I am sure that you will agree with me. Otherwise, with profound regrets and all best wishes, yours very sincerely...Yes, George, I quite agree with you - in the light of day and the dark of night, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health - and thank you so very much for your good wishes at this time...I wish for your sake, as well as mine, I had an explanation, but unfortunately I've none. You'd better just say, 'Good riddance,' George.
George: On the very eve of your wedding, an affair with another man.
Mike: Kittredge, it may interest you to know that the so-called 'affair' consisted of exactly two kisses and a rather late swim...All of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the memory of which I wouldn't part with for anything... After which I deposited Tracy on her bed in her room, and promptly returned down here to you two - which doubtless you'll remember.
Tracy: Why? Was I so unattractive, so distant, so forbidding, or something - that - ?
George: Well, this is fine talk, too.
Tracy: I'm asking a question.
Mike: You were extremely attractive, and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you also were a little the worse - or the better - for wine, and there are rules about that.
Tracy: Thank you, Mike. I think men are wonderful.
Liz: We all go haywire at times and if we don't, maybe we ought to.
George: A man expects his wife to ...
Tracy: ...behave herself, naturally.
Dexter: To behave herself naturally.
George: If it hadn't been for that drink last night, all this might not have happened.
Tracy: Apparently nothing did. What made you think it had?
George: Well, it didn't take much imagination!
Tracy: Not much, perhaps, but just of a certain kind.
George: It seems you didn't think anything too well of yourself.
Tracy: That's the odd thing, George. Somehow I would have hoped that you'd think better of me than I did.
George: I'm not going to quibble, Tracy. All the evidence was there!
Tracy: And I was guilty. Straight off. That is, until I was proved innocent.
George: Let's let bygones be bygones. What do ya say?
Tracy: Yes, and goodbye George...You're too good for me, George. You're a hundred times too good...And I'd make you most unhappy, most - That is, I'd do my best to.

View Quote Tracy: Are either of you married?
Mike: No.
Liz: Uh, no.
Tracy: You mean you were, but now you're divorced...Well, come now Miss Imbrie, surely you're not ashamed of it.
Liz: Well, of course I'm not ashamed of it.
Mike: WHAT!?
Liz: Well, it was years ago. I was only a kid in Duluth.
Mike: Well, good heavens Liz! You never told me anything...
Liz: You never asked me.
Mike: Well, I know, but you...
Liz: Joe Smith. Hardware.
Mike: You're the darnedest girl, Liz.
Liz: I think I'm sweet.
Tracy: Duluth. That must be a lovely spot. It's west of here, isn't it?...And this is your first visit in Philadelphia? It's a quaint old place, don't you think, filled with relics. And how old are you, Mr. Connor?
Mike: Thirty.
Tracy: One book isn't much for a man of thirty. Well, I don't mean to criticize. You probably have other interests outside your work.
Mike: None, I mean unless... [He gestures to acknowledge his friendship with Liz]
Tracy: How sweet. Are you going together?
Liz: Well, that is an odd question I must say.
Tracy: Well, I don't see why. I think it's very interesting. Miss Imbrie. Don't you agree that if a man says he loves a girl, he ought to marry her?
Mike: Can she be human?
Tracy: Please, Mr. Connor! I asked Miss Imbrie a question.
Liz: That depends. I-
Tracy: I'll see what's keeping Mama. [she leaves the room]

View Quote Tracy: Aren't you coming Liz?
Liz: Well, it seems I've got to commit suicide first.

View Quote Tracy: Hello you.
Mike: Hello you.
Tracy: You look fine.
Mike: I feel fine.
Tracy: I had a simply wonderful evening. I hope you enjoyed it too.
Mike: I enjoyed the last part of it.
Tracy: Really? Why especially the last?
Mike: Well, Tracy, are you asking me?
Tracy: Oh, you mean the swim!...[They laugh together nervously] I did swim, and so forth, didn't we? Mike -
Mike: Oh, Tracy, darling...
Tracy: Mike -
Mike: What can I say to you? Tell me, darling.
Tracy: Not anything - don't say anything. And especially not 'darling.'
Mike: Then you're going through with it, huh?
Tracy: Through with what?
Mike: The wedding.
Tracy: Why, why shouldn't I?
Mike: Well, I made a funny discovery. And in spite of the fact that somebody's up from the bottom, he can still be quite a heel. And even though somebody else is born to the purple, he-he can still be a very nice guy. Boy - I-I'm just repeating what you said last night.
Tracy: I said a lot of things last night, it seems.
Mike: Okay, no dice. Also, no regrets about last night, huh?
Tracy: Why should I have?
Mike: Oh Tracy, you're wonderful.
Tracy: You don't know what I mean! I'm asking you - tell me straight out - tell me the reason why I should have - have! No - don't.

View Quote Tracy: How do I look?
Mr. Lord: Like a queen - like a goddess.
Tracy: And do you know how I feel?
Mr. Lord: How?
Tracy: Like a human. Like a human being.
Mr. Lord: Do you know how I feel?
Tracy: How?
Mr. Lord: Proud.

View Quote Tracy: I don't know what's the matter with me. I must have had too much sun yesterday. My eyes don't open properly.
Dexter: You should have taken a quick swim when you got home.
Tracy: [remembering the previous night] A swim? A swim!
Dexter: There, now they're open.
Dinah: That was just the beginning, and it was no dream!

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.