Blithe Spirit Quotes

Charles Condomine: What do you suppose induced Agnes to leave us?

Ruth Condomine: The reason was becoming increasingly obvious, dear.

Charles Condomine: Yes. We must keep Edith in the house more.

Charles Condomine: Anything interesting in The Times

Ruth Condomine: Don't be silly, dear.

Violet Bradman: I must say I find bicycling very exhausting.

Madame Arcati: Steady rhythm - that's what does it. Once you get the knack of it you needn't ever look back...

Violet Bradman: But, the hills, Madame Arcati! Pushing up those awful hills.

Madame Arcati: Just knack... Down with your head, up with your heart, and you're over the top like a flash and skimming down the other side like a dragonfly.

[first lines]

words on a Victorian sampler: "When we are young / We read and believe / The most fantastic things. / When we are older / We learn with regret / That these things cannot be"

Narrator: We are quite, quite wrong!

Violet Bradman: Can you foretell the future?

Madame Arcati: Certainly not. I disapprove of fortune-tellers most strongly.

Violet Bradman: Oh, really - why?

Madame Arcati: Too much guesswork and fake mixed up with it - even when the gift is genuine - and it only very occasionally is - you can't count on it.

Ruth Condomine: Why not?

Madame Arcati: Time again. Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

Ruth Condomine: You mean because it has never yet been proved that the past and the present and the future are not one and the same thing?

Madame Arcati: I long ago came to the conclusion that nothing has ever been definitely proved about anything.

Ruth Condomine: [to Charles] Now I want you to come upstairs with me and go to bed.

Elvira Condomine: The way that woman harps on bed.

Ruth Condomine: Edith, you know the cocktail shaker?

Edith: Yes 'em.

Ruth Condomine: Well, I want you to fill two of those long stem glasses from it and bring them up here.

Edith: Yes 'em.

Ruth Condomine: And Edith, as you're not in the Navy, its unnecessary to do everything on the double.

Edith: Very good, ma'am.

Ruth Condomine: And Edith, when you're serving dinner, try to remember to do it calmly, methodically.

Edith: Yes 'em.

Ruth Condomine: Now, go and get the cocktails.

Violet Bradman: Its funny, isn't it, I mean to think of people doing it as a profession.

Dr. George Bradman: I believe its very lucrative.

Charles Condomine: I haven't forgotten Elvira. I remember her very distinctly, in deed. I remember how fascinating she was and how maddening. I remember how her gay charm when she'd achieved her own way over something and her extreme acidity when she didn't. I remember her physical attractiveness, which was tremendous, and her spiritual integrity which was nil.

Ruth Condomine: Was she more physically attractive than I am?

Charles Condomine: That's a very tiresome question, darling. It fully deserves a wrong answer.

Madame Arcati: Some mediums prefer Indians, of course. But, personally I've always found them unreliable.

Ruth Condomine: In what way, unreliable?

Madame Arcati: Well, to start with, they're frightfully lazy. Also, when faced with any sort of difficulty, they're apt to go off into their own tribal language - which is naturally unintelligible. That generally spoils everything and wastes a good deal of time.

Madame Arcati: I presume that's the gramophone?

Charles Condomine: Would you like me to start if for you? It's an electric one.

Madame Arcati: No, please stay where you are. I can manage.

Madame Arcati: We might contact a poltergeist - which would be extremely destructive and noisy.

Ruth Condomine: In what way destructive?

Madame Arcati: They throw things, you know.

Ruth Condomine: No. I didn't know.

Charles Condomine: Are you a - ghost?

Elvira Condomine: I suppose I must be. Its all very confusing.

Elvira Condomine: Get me to bed, Charles. Then we can talk in peace.

Charles Condomine: A thoroughly immoral suggestion. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Ruth Condomine: I gather you got some sort of plan behind all this? I'm not quite a fool.

Charles Condomine: Ruth, Elvira is here! She's standing a few yards away from you!

Ruth Condomine: Yes, dear, I can see her distinctly - under the piano with a zebra!

Charles Condomine: But, Ruth...

Ruth Condomine: I'm not going to stay here arguing any longer.

Charles Condomine: But, listen, Ruth, please...

Ruth Condomine: I will not listen to any more of this nonsense. I'm going upstairs to bed now. I shall leave you to turn off the lights. I won't be asleep. I'm much too upset. So, you can come in and say good night to me. If you feel like it.

Charles Condomine: Are you to be here indefinitely?

Elvira Condomine: I'm afraid I don't know that either. Why? Would you hate it so much if I was?

Charles Condomine: Well, you must admit, it'd be embarrassing.

Elvira Condomine: I don't see why, really. Its all a question of adjusting one's self.

Charles Condomine: Try to see my point of view, dear. I've been married to Ruth for five years and you've been dead for seven.

Elvira Condomine: Not dead, Charles. Passed over. Its considered very vulgar to say dead where I come from.

Elvira Condomine: Oh, I want to cry. But, I don't think I'm able to.

Charles Condomine: Well, what would you want to cry for?

Elvira Condomine: Well, at seeing you again and you being so irascible like you always used to be.

Charles Condomine: Well, I don't mean to be irascible, Elvira.

Elvira Condomine: Darling, I don't mind. really. I never did.

Charles Condomine: Was I ever unkind to you when you were alive?

Elvira Condomine: Often.

Charles Condomine: Oh, how can you? I'm sure you're exaggerating.

Elvira Condomine: Not at all. You were an absolute pig that time we went to Cornwall and stayed in that awful hotel. You hit me with a billiard cue.

Charles Condomine: Only very, very gently.

Elvira Condomine: I loved you very much.

Charles Condomine: I loved you too.

Charles Condomine: Poor Ruth.

Elvira Condomine: Nuts to Ruth.

Charles Condomine: Its extraordinary about daylight, isn't it?

Ruth Condomine: How do you mean?

Charles Condomine: Oh, it introduces everything to normal.

Ruth Condomine: Now look here, Charles, this display of roguish flippancy might have been alluring. In a middle-aged novelist it's nauseating.

Charles Condomine: I don't see what I've done that's so awful?

Ruth Condomine: You behaved abominably last night. You wounded me and insulted me.

Charles Condomine: I was a victim of an aberration.

Ruth Condomine: Nonsense. You were drunk.

Charles Condomine: You're very glacial this morning.

Ruth Condomine: Are you surprised?

Charles Condomine: Drunk?

Ruth Condomine: You had two strong dry martinis before dinner. A great deal too much burgundy at dinner. Heaven knows how much port and kimmel with Dr. Bradman while I was doing my best to entertain that mad woman. And two large brandies later. I gave them to you myself. Of course you were drunk.

Charles Condomine: I know I wasn't drunk. If I'd been all that drunk, I should have a dreadful hangover, shouldn't I?

Ruth Condomine: I'm not at all sure that you haven't.

Charles Condomine: Well, I haven't the trace of a headache. My tongues not coated. Look at it.

Ruth Condomine: I haven't the least desire to look at your tongue. Kindly put it in again.

Ruth Condomine: Will you be in for lunch, Charles?

Charles Condomine: Please don't worry about me. I shall be perfectly happy with a bottle of gin in my bedroom.

Ruth Condomine: Don't be silly dear.

Ruth Condomine: Alcohol will ruin your whole life if you allow it to get ahold on you, you know.

Charles Condomine: Once and for all, Ruth, I'd like you to understand that what happened last night was nothing whatever to do with alcohol! I grant you it may have been some form of psychic delusion, but I was stone cold sober from first to last.

Ruth Condomine: You called me a guttersnipe. You told me to shut up. And when I quietly suggested we should go upstairs to bed, you said, with the most disgusting leer, it was an immoral suggestion.

Charles Condomine: I was talking to Elvira.

Ruth Condomine: Charles, dear, if you weren't drunk, how do account for it?

Charles Condomine: I can't account for it. That's what's so awful.

Ruth Condomine: What did you have for lunch?

Charles Condomine: You ought to know, you had it with me.

Ruth Condomine: Let me see. It was lemon sole - and that cheese thing.

Charles Condomine: Why should having a cheese thing for lunch make me see my deceased wife after dinner?

Ruth Condomine: You never know, it was rather rich.

Charles Condomine: Well, why didn't you see your dead husband then? You had just as much of it as I did.

Charles Condomine: Promise you'll do what I ask.

Elvira Condomine: Well, that depends on what it is.

Madame Arcati: You're just in time for a cup of tea. That's if you don't mind China?

Ruth Condomine: Not at all.

Madame Arcati: I never touch Indian. It upsets my vibrations.

Ruth Condomine: Madame Arcati, I'm profoundly disturbed and I want your help.

Madame Arcati: Splendid! I thought as much. Fire away.

Charles Condomine: This whole business is very difficult for Ruth. We must be fair.

Elvira Condomine: Well, she should learn to be more adaptable.

Charles Condomine: She probably will in time.

Elvira Condomine: I doubt it, Charles. She's got a hard mouth. Its her mouth that gives her away.

Charles Condomine: Her mouth's got nothing to do with it. I resent you discussing Ruth as though she were a horse.

Madame Arcati: You say she's visible only to your husband?

Ruth Condomine: Yes.

Madame Arcati: Visible only to husband. Audible too, I presume?

Ruth Condomine: Extremely audible.

Charles Condomine: If only you'd make an effort to be a little more friendly to Elvira, we might all have quite a jolly time.

Ruth Condomine: I have no wish to have a jolly time with Elvira!

Charles Condomine: A woman in Cynthia Chavitz's position. would hardly wear false pearls.

Elvira Condomine: Well, they were practically all she was wearing.

Charles Condomine: As I'm pained to observe that seven years in the echoing vaults of eternity have in no way pared your native vulgarity.

Elvira Condomine: That was the remark of a pompous ass.

Charles Condomine: Captain Brayscone? I might have known it. What a fool I was. What a blind fool. Did he make love to you?

Elvira Condomine: Of course.

Charles Condomine: Oh, Elvira.

Elvira Condomine: Only very discretely. He was in the calvary, you know.

Ruth Condomine: This is definitely one of the most frustrating nights I've ever spent.

Elvira Condomine: The reply to that is pretty obvious.

Ruth Condomine: I'm sure I don't know what you mean.

Ruth Condomine: You called us back and you've done nothing but try to get rid of us ever since we came. Hasn't he, Elvira?

Elvira Condomine: He certainly has.

Ruth Condomine: Now, owing to your idiotic inefficiency, we find ourselves in this mortifying position. We're neither fish, flesh fowl, nor - whatever it is.

Charles Condomine, Elvira Condomine: Good red herring.

Madame Arcati: Insufferable! I've never been so insulted in my life! I feel we have nothing more to say to one another, Mrs. Condomine.

Ruth Condomine: But Madam Arcati, please.

Madame Arcati: Your attitude from the outset has been most unpleasant.

Ruth Condomine: It's clouding over.

Charles Condomine: You have a genius for under statement.

Madame Arcati: [after several failed exorcisms] Are they still here?

Charles Condomine: Yeah.

[clock chimes]

Charles Condomine: End of round six.