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[Louis Mazzini just murdered his relative, Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne, who was distributing suffragette literature from a balloon over London]
Louis Mazzini: I shot an arrow in the air; she fell to earth in Berkeley Square.
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The Hangman: Even my lamented master, the great Mr. Benny himself, never had the privilege of hanging a duke. What a finale to a lifetime in the public service!
Prison Governor: Finale?
The Hangman: Yes, I intend to retire. After using the silken rope... never again be content with hemp.
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Louis Mazzini: While I never admired Edith as much as when I was with Sibella, I never longed for Sibella as much as when I was with Edith.
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The Hangman: A difficult client can make things most distressing. Some of them tend to be very hysterical - so inconsiderate.
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Louis Mazzini: [after murdering his cousin along with his cousin's mistress] I was sorry about the girl, but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death.
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Louis Mazzini: The Reverend Lord Henry was not one of those new-fangled parsons who carry the principles of their vocation uncomfortably into private life.
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Louis Mazzini: The next morning I went out shooting with Ethelred - or rather, to watch Ethelred shooting; for my principles will not allow me to take a direct part in blood sports.
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Louis Mazzini: It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms.
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[to a poacher caught in a mantrap]
The Duke: Hoskins is now going to thrash you; then he'll let you go. Let this be a lesson to you not to poach on my land.
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Sibella: [sobs] Oh Louis! I don't want to marry Lionel!
Louis Mazzini: Why not?
Sibella: He's so dull.
Louis Mazzini: I must admit he exhibits the most extraordinary capacity for middle age that I've ever encountered in a young man of twenty-four.
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Sibella: What would you say if she asked you about me?
Louis Mazzini: I'd say that you were the perfect combination of imperfections. I'd say that your nose was just a little too short, your mouth just a little too wide. But yours was a face that a man could see in his dreams for the whole of his life. I'd say that you were vain, selfish, cruel, deceitful. I'd say that you were adorable. I'd say that you were... Sibella.
Sibella: What a pretty speech.
Louis Mazzini: I mean it.
Sibella: [seductively] Come and say it to me again.
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The Parson: The port is with you
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Louis Mazzini: I had not forgotten or forgiven the boredom of the sermon of young Henry's funeral, and I decided to promote the Reverend Lord Henry D'Ascoyne to next place on the list.
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[first lines]
Warder in Jail: Good evening, Mr. Elliot.
The Hangman: Good evening.
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[last lines]
Tit Bits reporter.: Your grace. I represent the magazine "Tit Bits" by whom I'm commissioned to approach you for the publication rights of your memoirs.
Louis Mazzini: My memoirs? Oh, my memoirs. My memoirs. My memoirs!
[Mazzini suddenly realises that he has left his memoirs, in which he confesses to killing all his relatives, in the condemned cell after being released from prison]
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Louis Mazzini: [to the Duke, before he executes him] From here, I think, the wound will be consistent with the story I shall tell.
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The Parson: [Describing his country church] I always say my West window has all the *exuberance* of Chaucer without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period.
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Sibella: I've married the dullest man in London.
Louis Mazzini: In England!
Sibella: In Europe!
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Louis Mazzini: I want to talk to you for a minute. If you make a noise, I shall blow your head off at once. By the time anyone has heard the shot I shall be running back toward the castle shouting for help. I shall say that you stepped on the trap and your gun went off as you fell. So be quiet.
Louis Mazzini: [Lights Cigarette]
Louis Mazzini: When I've finished I shall kill you. You will be the sixth D'Ascoyne that I've killed. You want to know why? In return for what the D'Acoyne's did to my mother. Because she married for love instead of for rank or money or land. They condemed her to a life of poverty and slavery, in a world for which they had not equipped her to deal. You yourself refused to grant her dying wish, which was to be buried here, at Chalfont. When I saw her poor little coffin slide underground, saw her exiled in death as she had been in life, I swore to have revenge on your intolerable pride. That revenge I am just about to complete.
The D'Ascoyne Family: The Duke: It's clear that you are insane. Give me that gun at once!
Louis Mazzini: No.
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Sibella: He says he wants to go to Europe to expand his mind.
Louis Mazzini: He certainly has room to do so.
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Louis Mazzini: I made an oath that I would revenge the wrongs her family had done her. It was no more than a piece of youthful bravado, but it was one of those acorns from which great oaks are destined to grow. Even then I went so far as to examine the family tree and prune it to just the living members. But what could I do to hurt them? What could I take from them, except, perhaps, their lives.
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Louis Mazzini: I considered it both seemly and touching that my dear wife should visit me as she did this morning, to make her farewells. Your arrival on the other hand, appears to me unseemly and tasteless in the extreme.
Sibella: I couldn't bear my last sight of you to be that look of hatred you gave me as you went out from the trial
Louis Mazzini: In view of the fact that your evidence had put the rope around my neck, you could hardly expect a glance of warm affection.
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Louis Mazzini: I couldn't help feeling that even Sibella's capacity for lying was going to be taxed to the utmost. Time had brought me revenge on Lionel, and as the Italian proverb says, revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold.
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Prison Governor: If I may venture to say so, I am amazed at your calmness.
Louis Mazzini: Dr. Johnson was, as always, right when he observed, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he's going to be hanged in a few hours, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
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Louis Mazzini: It is so difficult to make a neat trump of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms.
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Sibella: All of your cousins seem to get killed. I really wouldn't be the least surprised if you murdered them all.
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Louis Mazzini: It was not a piece of news that I was looking forward to breaking to Sibella. She had no rights in the matter, but women have a disconcerting ability to make scenes out of nothing and approve themselves injured when they themselves are at fault.
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Sibella: Oh, the Italian men are so handsome... but I could never get away from Lionel for a moment. But, I was forgetting... you're Italian.
Louis Mazzini: Half.
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Louis Mazzini: How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away.
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The Banker: A tragic loss serves to put lesser matters in their proper perspective.
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The Hangman: The last execution of a Duke in this country was very badly bungled. That was in the old days of the axe, of course.
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Sibella: [during an illicit rendezvous] What am I doing?
Louis Mazzini: You know very well. You're playing with fire.
Sibella: At least it warms me.
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Louis Mazzini: As in an old Italian proverb: revenge is the dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold.
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Sibella: Lionel will be very rich one day.
Louis Mazzini: I might be a duke one day.
Sibella: Pigs might fly.
Louis Mazzini: No, I might. Really I might. You see, Mama was the daughter...
Sibella: [yawning] Oh yes, I know. Well, when you are a duke, you just come and show me your... crown, or whatever it's called, and then I'll feel awfully silly won't I?
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The Hangman: [about to lead Mazzini, who has become a Duke, to the gallows] Good morning, Your Grace. This won't take a moment. First, if Your Grace will pardon the liberty, I should like to read some verses composed by myself for use on these melancholy occasions. Your Grace permits?
Louis Mazzini: - With pleasure.
The Hangman: [Clears his throat] My friend, reflect -
[Corrects himself awkwardly]
The Hangman: Oh. Oh. Pardon. Your Grace, reflect: while yet of mortal breath some span, however short, is left to thee, / How brief the total span twixt birth and death, How long thy coming tenure of eternity. /
[Takes a deep breath and continues with ponderous emphasis on each syllable:]
The Hangman: Your Grace, prepare -
[to his great disappointment, a messenger rushes into the cell and announces that new evidence has been discovered which exonerates Mazzini, and the execution is cancelled]
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Edith: Was Lord Tennyson far from the mark when he wrote, "Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood?"
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The Hangman: Even my lamented master, the great Mr. Barry himself, never had the privilege of hanging a duke...
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Louis Mazzini: No, I forgot. You're pledged to Lionel. I behaved like a cad that night.
Sibella: I liked you when you behaved like a cad.
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Edith: But I have often felt that the attitude of my husband's family has failed to move with the times. That they think too much of the rights of the nobility and too little of its duties. The very honesty of your behavior would appear to me to prove them wrong.
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Louis Mazzini: The D'Ascoynes certainly appear to have accorded with the tradition of the landed gentry, and sent the fool of the family into the church.
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Edith: [while Henry, her husband, has been murdered by explosion and smoke started coming up from wall behind her] I hoped that perhaps he would interest himself in the welfare of our tenantry, as I do. But he became interested in photography on our honeymoon and since then it has become the major preoccupation of his life... Mr Mazzini...
Louis Mazzini: Yes?
Edith: I hope you will forgive my speaking to you on a personal matter, but it worries me that Henry should spend so much time on his hobby that he has little left for any more useful activity. Am I right to let him go on like this?
Louis Mazzini: [Voiceover] I could hardly point out that Henry now had no time left for any kind of activity, so I continued to discuss his future.
Louis Mazzini: He has never shown any wish for a career in politics?
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Ascoyne D'Ascoyne: I have decided to appoint you my private secretary, at a salary of five hundred pounds per annum.
Louis: Sir, I cannot begin to tha...
Ascoyne D'Ascoyne: Please do not try.
Kind Hearts and Coronets Quotes
Extended Reading
