Quotes for the Crucible Flashcards
John Proctor
‘Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!’
“I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again.”
“This society will not be a bag to swing around your head”
“You cannot command Mr Parris. We vote by name in this society, not by acreage”
“I mean it solemnly Rebecca; I like not the smell of this authority.”
“Woman. I’ll not have your suspicion anymore.”
“I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.”
“I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!”
“I do wonder on it, when such a steady-minded minister as you will suspicion such a woman that never lied and cannot, and the world knows she cannot!”
“A man may think God sleeps, but God sees everything, I know it now.”
“You are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore!”
Elizabeth Proctor
“I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John – only somewhat bewildered.”
“It is not my soul, John, it is yours”
“She’d dare not call out such a farmer’s wife but there be monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place, John.”
“He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.”
Abigail Williams
“It’s a bitter woman, a lying, cold, snivelling woman, and I will not work for such a woman!”
“They want slaves, not such as I…I will not black my face for any of them!”
“My name is good in the village! I will not have it said my name is soiled!”
“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word…and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.”
“And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads”
“A wild thing may say wild things.”
John Hale
“Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small”
“You are a broken minister” (PROCTOR)
“There is blood on my head!”
“Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.”
“Light, goodness and its preservation” (How he sees his mission to eliminate the devil)
“Is every defence an attack upon the court?”
“It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice.”
Danforth
“I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not melt the resolution of the statues”
“Do you know that near to four hundred are in the jails…upon my signature and seventy-two condemned to hang by that signature?”
“You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time”
Parris
“There be no unnatural cause here”
“If you trafficked with spirits in the forest I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it”
“And I pray you feel the weight of truth upon you, for now my ministry’s at stake, my ministry and perhaps your cousin’s life”
“I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me”
“They will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house.”
Rebecca Nurse
“If Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing’s left to stop the whole green world from burning” (HALE)
“I think she’ll wake when she tires of it.’’
(VOICE OF REASONING)
“A prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits” (VOICE OF WARNING)
“Why, it is a lie…how may I damn myself? I cannot, I cannot”
Giles Corey
“They say he give them but two words. “More weight,”” (REBECCA NURSE)
