The New World Quotes

  • John Smith: He who does not work, shall not eat!

  • Pocahontas: Did you find your Indies, John? You shall.

    Captain John Smith: [after a long reflective pause] I may have sailed past them.

  • Pocahontas: [voice over] I will find joy in all I see.

  • John Smith: [voice over] If only I could go down that river. To love her in the wild, forget the name of Smith. I should tell her. Tell her what? It was just a dream. I am now awake.

  • Captain Argall: Conscience is a nuisance. A fly. A barking dog.

  • Captain John Smith: Love... shall we deny it when it visits us... shall we not take what we are given.

  • John Rolfe: [voice over] Sweet wife, love made the bond, love can break it too.

  • John Rolfe: I think you still love the man, and that you will not be at peace until you see him. In my vanity I thought I could make you love me, and one cannot do that or should not. You have walked blindly into a situation that you did not anticipate.

    Pocahontas: You are the man I thought you were and more.

  • Captain Christopher Newport: Let him go.

    Colonist: You said to hang him, sir.

    Captain Christopher Newport: Now remember Smith, you've come to these shores in chains. You're under a cloud, which you'll darken considerably if I hear any more of your mutinous remarks. Is that understood?

    John Smith: [nods in recognition]

  • Captain Christopher Newport: All these months at sea. I'm weary of looking further. This place will serve. We have deep water to the shore. We can see up and down the river. Our enemies will have no advantage of surprise. Bring the anchors and the midsails to shore in case some homesick person decides to slip away with them. We must be careful not to offend the Naturals. If our crops fail, we shall be obliged to trade with them. Once we're established here, we may go up the river and seek a route to the other sea.

  • John Smith: [to Pocahontas] Don't trust me. You don't know who I am!

  • Pocahontas: What else is life but being near you!

  • Ben: Captain Newport, sir, I found oysters. They're as thick as my hands. They're the size of stones sir and there's fish everywhere they're flapping against your legs. We're gonna live like kings.

  • Pocahontas: He has killed the God within me,

  • John Rolfe: [voice over] Who are you, what do you dream of?

    Pocahontas: We are like grass.

  • John Smith: I thought it was dream... what we knew in the forest. It's the only truth.

  • Captain Argall: Captain Smith is the only professional soldier among us.

    Captain Edward Wingfield: Smith, sir? What are... what are... what are his qualifications?

    Captain Argall: Those you lack.

  • Captain John Smith: [voice over] Who are you whom I so faintly hear? Who urge me ever on? What voice is this that speaks within me... guides me towards the best? We shall make a new start. A fresh beginning. Here the blessings of the earth are bestowed upon all. None need grow poor. Here there is good ground for all, and no cost but one's labor. We shall build a true common wealth, hard work and self reliance our virtues. We shall have no landlords to reack us with high rents or extort the fruit of our labor.

  • John Smith: Who are you?

    Pocahontas: Who are you?

    John Rolfe: Who are you?

  • Selway: You're like a herd of deer! How can you own land? This earth was made for such that shall improve it! And knows how to live!

  • Captain John Smith: [voice over] They are gentle, loving, faithful, lacking in all guile and trickery. The words denoting lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander, and forgiveness have never been heard. They have no jealousy, no sense of possesion. Real, what I thought a dream.

  • Tomocomo: N'eymado

  • Captain Christopher Newport: Tonight we shall sleep aboard our ships, everyone in full armor. In the morning, we will chop down every tree within half a mile of the moorage, and use the straightest limbs to erect a line of watchtowers and to build our fort. When we have done that, we set our wheat and barley, put up houses and lay in firewood. Slackers will be whipped at the sight of their transgression.

    Emery: Sir.

    Captain Christopher Newport: Yes, Emery?

    Emery: When might we, uh, be going out to... poke about, sir?

    Captain Christopher Newport: We are not here to pillage and raid. We are here to establish a colony.

  • Captain John Smith: How many lands behind me? How many seas?

  • Captain John Smith: We don't take hostages. King James would not approve.

    Captain Argall: You'd rather see us annihilated?

    Captain John Smith: She's done enough for us. She risked a beating out of her own brains to save mine. Had she not fed us, you would have starved. She's been the instrument to preserve this colony from disaster. We shall not return her kindness by making her a captive! Come Argall, threaten me! Then I'd know I was gonna live for 1,000 years.

    Captain Argall: She and her lot are on the berge of killing us all. I expect there will be scarce a handfull alive when the boats return if they ever do. You told us yourself that her father regards her as no one else. Or, do you have private reasons for this attitude of yours?

    Captain John Smith: Return to your post. The penalty for disobeying an order of the president is hanging. You're breaking the laws. This is mutiny.

    Captain Argall: Me breaking the laws?

    Captain Argall: [shouting] I have information Smith here is planning to marry the wench and make himself King of Virginia.

  • Captain John Smith: [voiceover] There is only this - all else is unreal.

  • Pocahontas: [voiceover] Mother, why can I not feel as I should... must? Once false, I must not be again. Take out the thorn.

  • Pocahontas: [voiceover] You flow through me, like a river.

  • Pocahontas: [voiceover referring to John Rolfe] He is like a tree. He shelters me. I lie in his shade.

  • Pocahontas: [voiceover] No, all is perfect, let me be lost.

  • Captain John Smith: [voiceover] At the moment I was to die she threw herself upon me.

  • John Rolfe: [voiceover] When first I saw her she was regarded as someone finished, lost, broken. She seemed barely to notice of the others about her.

  • Pocahontas: [Rolfe wraps his arm around her waist from behind and kisses the back of her neck] I cannot do that.

    John Rolfe: Why not?

    Pocahontas: It would mean something I do not feel.

    John Rolfe: What has come over you?

    Pocahontas: I am already married... to him. He lives. I heard it by the fort.

    John Rolfe: Married? You said you did not know the meaning of the word exactly.

    Pocahontas: But I am.

  • Captain John Smith: There's something I know when I'm with you that I forget when I'm away.

  • [about Pocahontas]

    Captain John Smith: All the children of the king were beautiful, but she, the youngest, was so exceedingly so that the sun himself - though he saw her often - was surprised whenever she came out into his presence. Her father had a dozen wives, a hundred children, but she was his favorite. She exceeded the rest not only in feature and proportion but in wit and spirit too. All loved her.

  • Pocahontas: [looking at a map for the first time] Why does the Earth have colors?

  • John Rolfe: She weaves all things together.

  • Pocahontas: What else is life but being near you? Do they suspect? Oh, to be given to you; you to me. I will be faithful to you. True.

  • Pocahontas: Mother, where do you live? In the sky? The clouds? The sea? Show me your face. Give me a sign. We rise... we rise. Afraid of myself. A god, he seems to me. What else is life but being near you? Do they suspect? Oh, to be given to you. You to me. I will be faithful to you. True. Two no more. One. One. I am... I am.

  • [last lines]

    Pocahontas: Mother, now I know where you live.

    John Rolfe: [reading letter] "13th of April, 1616. Dear son, I write this so that someday in the future you might understand a circumstance which shall be but a far memory to you. Your dear mother, Rebecca, fell ill in our outward passage at Gravesend. She gently reminded me that all must die. 'Tis enough, she said, that you our child, should live.'"

  • Mary: He's left you, Princess. He told you a pack of lies. Forget about him.

  • John Smith: [pondering to himself] I let her love me. I made her love me.

  • John Smith: He that will not work shall not eat! The labors of honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain the idleness of a few!

  • [first lines]

    Pocahontas: Come, spirit, help us sing the story of our land. You are our mother. We, your field of corn. We rise from out of the soul of you.

  • Newport's Assistant: You're not ignorant to the heavy displeasure which almighty God conceived against the sons of Levi and Israel for marrying strange wives?

    John Rolfe: No.

    Newport's Assistant: Would you do anything necessary to bring this about?

    John Rolfe: Yes.

    Newport's Assistant: Would you write a petition explaining, as the wealthiest Planter in Virginia, the benefit this would offer the cause?

    John Rolfe: [Thinking] The governor requires of me a letter stating acceptable reasons for our union.

    Newport's Assistant: Could you state your hope that this might be the beginning of the great work of converting the Naturals? That this idea came to you in no way through any carnal affection, but for the good of the plantation, for the honor of your country? And your own soul, humiliated, saving an unbelieving creature and moving you and your general assembly to a new generation?

    John Rolfe: [Thinking] And yet she does not touch me.

    Newport's Assistant: If this be not your true intent, would you do that?

    John Rolfe: Yes.

    Captain Christopher Newport: Then surely you do love her, Mr. Rolfe.

  • Pocahontas: [voice-over] Dear mother, you fill the land with your beauty. You reach to the end of the world. How shall I seek you? Show me your face. You, a great river that never runs dry.