The Lady's Not for Burning Quotes

“What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“We are all of us lost. The best we can do is make whatever we're lost in as much like home as we can.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I seem to wish to have some importance
In the play of time. If not,
Then sad was my mother's pain, my breath, my bones,
My web of nerves, my wondering brain,
to be shaped and quickened with such anticipation
Only to feed the swamp of space.
What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.
And so you see it might be better to die.
Though, on the other hand, I admit it might
Be immensely foolish.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I travel light; as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“ALIZON They told me no one was here.
RICHARD It would be me they meant.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I must tell you I've just been reborn."
"Nicholas, you always think you can do things better than your mother. You can be sure you were born quite adequately on the first occasion.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Men are strange. It's almost unexpected to find they speak English.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Am I supposed to be merely exercising my tongue Or am I being listened to?”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“The trees were as bright as a shower of broken glass.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I have always been sure
That when [the Day of Judgement] comes it will come in autumn.
Heaven, I am quite sure, wouldn't disappoint
The bulbs.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“When he was born he gave an algebraic
Cry; at one glance measured the cubic content Of that ivory cone his mother's breast
And multiplied his appetite by five.
So he matured by a progression, gained Experience by correlation, expanded Into a marriage by contraction, and by Certain physical dynamics
Formulated me. And on he went
Still deeper into the calculating twilight Under the twinkling of five-pointed figures Till Truth became for him the sum of sums And Death the long division. My poor father.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I have come Here to have the protection of your laughter.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Your life, sir, is propelled
By a dream of the fear of having nightmares; your love
Is the fear of being alone; your world's history
The fear of a possible leap by a possible antagonist
Out of a possible shadow, or a not-improbable
Skeleton out of your dead-certain cupboard.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Thomas, only another Fifty years or so and then I promise to let you go.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“jennet. Are you doing this to save me?
thomas. You natter my powers,
My sweet; you're too much a woman. But if you wish You can go down to the dinner of damnation
On my arm.
jennet. I dine elsewhere.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Your innocence is on at such a rakish angle it gives you quite an air of iniquity.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“JENNET:
They also say that I bring back the past;
For instance Helen comes
Brushing the maggots from her eyes,
And, clearing here throat of the dust of several thousand years
She says "I loved ..."; but cannot any longer
Remember names. Sad Helen. Or Alexander, wearing
His imperial cobwebs and breastplate of shining worms
Wakens and looks for his glasses, to find the empire
Which he knows he put beside his bed.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“... we have given you a world as contradictory as a female, as cabbalistic as a male, a conscienceless hermaphrodite who plays heaven off against hell, hell off against heaven, revolving in the ballroom of the skies glittering with conflict as diamonds: we have wasted paradox and mystery on you when all you ask us for is cause and effect!
A copy of your birth-certificate was all you needed to make you at peace with Creation. How uneconomical the whole thing's been.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“MARGARET Have any of you Seen that poor child Alizon? I think she must be lost.
NICHOLAS Who isn't? The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in look as much like home as we can. Now don't be worried. She can't be more lost than she was with us.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Madam, if I were Herod in the middle Of the massacre of the innocents, I'd pause
Just to consider the confusion of your imagery.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I've only one small silver night to spend
So show me no luxuries. It will be enough
If you spare me a spider, and when it spins I'll see The six days of Creation in a web
And a fly caught on the seventh. And if the dew Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“You may be decay and a platitude Of flesh, but I have no other such memory of life.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Do you want our spirits to hobble out of their graves Enduring twinges of hopeless human affection
As long as death shall last? Still to suffer
Pain in the amputated limb! To feel
Passion in vacuo! That is the sort of thing
That causes sun-spots, and the lord knows what Infirmities in the firmament.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“You have cut yourself a shape on the air, which may be My scar.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“It really is
Beyond the limit of respectable superstition
To confuse my voice with a peacock's.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“JENNET What can you see Out there?
THOMAS Out here? Out here is a sky so gentle Five stars are ventured on it. I can see
The sky's pale belly glowing and growing big, Soon to deliver the moon. And I can see
A glittering smear, the snail-trail of the sun
Where it crawled with its golden shell into the hills. A darkening land sunken into prayer
Lucidly in dewdrops of one syllable,
Nunc dimittis. I see twilight, madam.
JENNET But what can you hear?
THOMAS The howl of human jackals-.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“God bless you, in case you sneeze.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“If only inflicted pain could be as contagious
As a plague, you might use it more sparingly.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I know I am not
A practical person; legal matters and so forth
Are Greek to me, except, of course, \
That I understand Greek. And what may seem nonsensical v To men of affairs like yourselves might not seem so
To me, since everything astonishes me,
Myself most of all. When I think of myself
I can scarcely believe my senses. But there it is,
All my friends tell me I actually exist
And by an act of faith I have come to believe them.
But this fellow who is being such a trouble to us,
He, on the contrary, is so convinced
He is that he wishes he was not. Now why
Should that be?”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning