Memorable Quotes from My Fair Lady (1964)
Directed by: George Cukor
Original Story of Pygmalion: George Bernard Shaw
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner
Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle
Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins
Stanley Holloway as Alfred P. Doolittle
Wilfrid Hyde-White as Colonel Hugh Pickering
Jeremy Brett as Freddie Eynsford-Hill
-Eliza Doolittle: I ain't done nothin' wrong by speaking to the
gentleman. I've a right to sell flowers if I keep off the kerb. I'm a
respectable girl, so help me; I never spoke to him 'cept so far as to buy
a flower off me!
-Henry Higgins: She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty...
-Henry Higgins: Eliza, you are to stay here for the next six months
learning to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist's shop. If you're
good and do whatever you are told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom,
have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in
taxis. But if you are naughty and idle you shall sleep in the back
kitchen amongst the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a
broomstick. At the end of six months you shall be taken to Buckingham
Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the king finds out you are
not a lady, you will be taken to the Tower of London, where your head will
be cut off as a warning to other presumptuous flower girls.
But if you are not found out, you shall have a present of...
seven-and-six to start life with as a lady in a shop. If you
refuse this offer, you will be the most ungrateful wicked girl; and the
angels will weep for you.
-Henry Higgins:You mean to say you'd sell your daughter for fifty
pounds?
-Colonel Pickering:Have you no morals man?
-Alfred P. Doolittle: No, no, I can't afford 'em, Gov'ner. Neither could
you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any 'arm, mind you, but if
Eliza's getting a bit out of this, why not me too? Eh? Why not? Well, look
at it my way - what am I? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving
poor, that's what I am. Now think what that means to a man. It means that
he's up against middle-class morality for all of time. If there's anything
going, and I puts in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "you're
undeserving, so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most
deserving widows that ever got money out of six different charities in one
week for the death of the same 'usband. I don't need less than a deserving
man, I need more! I don't eat less 'earty than 'e does, and I drink, oh, a
lot more. I'm playin' straight with you. I ain't pretendin' to be
deserving. No, I'm undeserving. And I mean to go on being undeserving. I
like it and that's the truth. But, will you take advantage of a man's
nature to do 'im out of the price of 'is own daughter what he's brought
up, fed and clothed by the sweat of 'is brow till she's growed big enough
to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Well, is five pounds unreasonable?
I'll put it to you, and I'll leave it to you.
-Colonel Pickering: Have you NO morals, man?
-Alfred P. Doolittle: Nah. Can't afford none. Neither could you, if you
were as poor as me.
-Henry Higgins: I know your head aches; I know you're tired; I know
your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what
you're trying to accomplish. Think what you're dealing with. The majesty
and grandeur of the English language, it's the greatest possession we
have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are
contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of
sounds. (Pause.) And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer Eliza... And
conquer it you will.
-Eliza Doolittle: My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it's my
belief they done the old woman in. Yes Lord love you! Why should she die
of influenza when she come through diphtheria right enough the year
before? Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my
father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden
that she bit the bowl off the spoon. Now, what would you call a woman with
that strength in her have to die of influenza, and what become of her new
straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say
is, them that pinched it, done her in. Them she lived with would have
killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat. And as for father ladling the
gin down her throat, it wouldn't have killed her. Not her. Gin was as
mother's milk to her. Besides, he's poured so much down his own throat
that he knew the good of it.
-Freddy Eynsford-Hill: It's the new small talk. You do it so awfully
well.
-Professor Henry Higgins: You won my bet? Why you presumptuous little
insect, *I* won it.
-Henry Higgins: She's an owl, sickened by a few days of *my*
sunshine.
-Henry Higgins: Why can't a woman be more like a man?
-Eliza Doolittle: I ain't dirty! I washed my face and hands before I
come, I did.
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