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Narrator: She's lived for 400 years and hardly aged a day; but, because this is England, everyone pretends not to notice.
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Shelmerdine: You're hurt ma'am.
Orlando: I'm dead, sir.
Shelmerdine: Dead. That's serious. Can I help?
Orlando: Will you marry me?
Shelmerdine: Ma'am... I would gladly, but I fear my ankle is twisted.
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Orlando: Same person. No difference at all... just a different sex.
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Archduke Harry: Orlando, to me you were and always will be, whether male or female, the pink, the pearl, and the perfection of your sex.
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The Khan: It has been said to me that the English make a habit of collecting... countries.
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Archduke Harry: I'm offering you my hand.
Orlando: Oh! Archduke! That's very kind of you, yes. I cannot accept.
Archduke Harry: But I... I am England. And you are mine.
Orlando: I see. On what grounds?
Archduke Harry: That I adore you.
Orlando: And this means that I belong to you?
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Orlando: But you are mine!
Princess Sasha: But why?
Orlando: Because... I adore you.
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Euphrosyne: The treachery of men!
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Orlando: The treachery of women!
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Orlando: I can find only three words to describe the female sex. None of which are worth expressing.
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First Official: We wish to inform you. Madam. That you are a party to several major lawsuits that have been preferred against you concerning the property.
Second Official: The family seat.
Orlando: Pray continue.
First Official: One: You are legally dead and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever.
Orlando: Ah. Fine.
First Official: Two: You are now a female.
Second Official: Which amounts to much the same thing.
First Official: Pending the legal judgment, however, you have the laws permission to reside in the property - in a state of incognito.
Second Official: Or, incognita, as the case may be.
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Orlando's Father: Now, what would please you? All that is mine is here for your pleasure.
Queen Elizabeth I: All you call yours is mine already.
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Queen Elizabeth I: [conferring the family estate upon Orlando] For you and for your heirs, Orlando: the house.
Orlando: Your Majesty, I am forever...
Queen Elizabeth I: But on one condition. Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old.
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Orlando: Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates melancholy from happiness.
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Pope: Sir, I accept your general rule, that every poet is a fool, but you yourself may serve to show it, that every fool is not a poet.
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[Orlando starts to tend to the wounds of an enemy soldier]
Archduke Harry: Leave him.
Orlando: This is a dying man.
Archduke Harry: He's not a man. He's the enemy.
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Archduke Harry: If I were a man...
Orlando: You?
Archduke Harry: I might choose not to risk my life for an uncertain cause. I might think that freedom won by death is not worth having. In fact...
Orlando: You might choose not to be a real man at all. Say, if I was a woman...
Archduke Harry: You?
Orlando: I might choose not to sacrifice my life caring for my children, nor my children's children, nor to drown anonymously in the milk of female kindness, but instead, say, to go abroad. Would I then be...
Archduke Harry: A real woman?
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[speaking in French]
Princess Sasha: You speak French?
Orlando: A bit. But most of the English can't... don't want to speak other languages.
Princess Sasha: But how do they communicate with foreigners?
Orlando: They speak English louder.
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Orlando: Ah, see the virgin rose, How sweetly she doth first peep forth, With bashful modesty. That fair her seems the less ye see her may, Lo see soon after how - more bold and free her bared bosom she doth broad display.
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Earl of Moray: Don't you see in courting a Cossack, you're humiliating not only your fiancée, but the entire female population of this country.
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Orlando: I no longer care for a career, Moray. I'm only interested in love.
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Orlando: For your sake, I would hunt wolf instead of rabbit and drink vodka instead of whiskey.
Princess Sasha: How generous.
Orlando: As for marriage to the good Lady Euphrosyne the thing is so probably absurd that I scarcely give it a thought.
Princess Sasha: How gallant.
Orlando: I feel as if I've been hooked through the nose and rushed through the waters painfully yet with my own consent.
Princess Sasha: How brave.
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Euphrosyne: My Lord, have you quite forgotten that we are betrothed?
Orlando: My Lady, I'm being constantly reminded.
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Orlando: A man must follow his heart.
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Princess Sasha: Why are you sad?
Orlando: Because. Because I can't bear this happiness to end.
Princess Sasha: But we are together.
Orlando: Yes, now. But what about tomorrow? And the day after?
Princess Sasha: Orlando, I think you suffer from a strange melancholy. Which is, you suffer in advance. Look at me. Look. You are too serious, Orlando. And yet not serious enough.
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Princess Sasha: Shadows, you saw shadows.
Orlando: You were in his arms.
Princess Sasha: It was illusion in light.
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Orlando: When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone be weep my outcast state, And trouble heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate. Ah, poetry.
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Orlando: And now Mr Greene to the subject closer to my heart and yours. The sacred subject of poetry. You know, I once broke a lady's fan in my enthusiasm to find a rhyme.
Nick Greene: Enthusiasm can be dangerous.
Orlando: As a youth I was often mocked for my love of poetry and solitude.
Nick Greene: Tragic.
Orlando: And, of course, Mr Greene, your works hold pride of place in my library. To me there is a certain glory about a man who can express in words those great emotions that others can only feel.
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Nick Greene: If we would speak of poetry then let us first speak of poets lives. Do you know how 'Hamlet' was written? Written while bailiffs were pounding on Shakespeare's door.
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Nick Greene: It hurts me to say it. For I love literature, as I love life. But the art of poetry is dead in England.
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Orlando: Well, here I am again.
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Second Butler: Some more invitations my lady.
Orlando: Is not this the lady famed for her literary gatherings?
Second Butler: Yes ma'am, but you could not possibly venture there. Alone.
Orlando: Why ever not?
Second Butler: Society ma'am is full of dangerous individuals, which and - poets.
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Pope: You are an expert in this field?
Swift: I believe I can say I have some knowledge.
Pope: A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Countess: Mr Pope, I must write that down at once.
Pope: I already have madam.
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Swift: Women have no desires, only affectation.
Pope: Indeed women are but children of larger growth.
Addison: Ah, but I consider woman to be a beautiful romantic animal. Who should be adorned in furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds. Apart from my wife of course. Who will insist upon attempting to learn Greek. It's so very unbecoming I can hardly tolerate her company at the breakfast table. Why do they do it?
Swift: Oh, every woman is adverse to contradiction and frankly most women have no characters at all.
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Orlando: Gentlemen. I find it strange. You are poets, each one of you and speak of your muse in the feminine. And yet you appear to feel neither tenderness nor respect towards your wives, nor towards females in general.
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Pope: Conversation is a place where one plays with ideas, my dear lady. Where one forges them quite alone.
Swift: Quite so.
Addison: Quite. Quite.
Pope: The intellect is a solitary place. And therefore quite unsuitable a terrain for females who must discover their natures through the guidance of a father or husband.
Orlando: And if she has neither?
Pope: Then, however charming she may be, dear lady, she is lost.
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Archduke Harry: Orlando, with your history quite frankly who else will have you? Do you realize what you're turning down? With your ambiguous sexuality which I am prepared to tolerate, this is your last chance of respectability.
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Orlando: Nature, nature, I'm your bride. Take me.
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Shelmerdine: What's that?
Orlando: The future.
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Shelmerdine: I've been abroad. But east.
Orlando: Then you know as well as I, how good it is to travel. Like a free spirit. Unfettered by position or possession.
Shelmerdine: Unfettered.
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Archduke Harry: Are you - an adventurer by profession?
Orlando: My profession, if you can call it that, is the pursuit of liberty. Like the bright shade - of some immortal dream, which walks when tempus sleeps.
Archduke Harry: The wave of life's dark stream.
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Orlando: I think the spirit of this century is finally taken me and broken me.
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Shelmerdine: Come with me.
Orlando: I cannot. I can't just follow you.
Shelmerdine: You can stay and stagnate in the past or leave and live for the future! The choice is yours.
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Orlando: This future of yours Shelmerdine, when it's gonna begin? Today? Or, is it always tomorrow?
Orlando Quotes
Extended Reading
