Quotes

Smiles of a Summer Night

Petra the Maid: And then the summer night smiled for the third time.
Frid the Groom: [to the audience] For the sad, the depressed, the sleepless, the confused, the frightened, the lonely.

Desiree Armfeldt: Why don't you write your memoirs?
Mrs. Armfeldt: My dear daughter, I was given this estate for promising not to write my memoirs.

Mrs. Armfeldt: If people knew the evil caused by listening to others, they would not care about listening and would be far happier.

Mrs. Armfeldt: Your father once threw me out of a window.
Desiree Armfeldt: Was it open?
Mrs. Armfeldt: No, closed. I fell straight into a lieutenant colonel. He later became your father.
Desiree Armfeldt: You said my father threw you out.
Mrs. Armfeldt: He became your father later, I said. Aren't you listening? My God I loved him so!
Desiree Armfeldt: Which one?
Mrs. Armfeldt: The one who threw me out the window, of course. The other one was a dolt. He never could do anything amusing.

Mrs. Armfeldt: One can never protect a single human being from any kind of suffering. That is what makes one so tremendously weary.

[Carl Magnus' wife has just told him that his mistress may be involved with someone else - he says to his wife]
Carl Magnus: I can tolerate my wife's infidelity, but if anyone touches my mistress, I become a tiger.

[Later, his mistress tells him that his wife may be unfaithful - he says to his mistress]
Carl Magnus: I can tolerate someone dallying with my mistress, but if anyone touches my wife, I become a tiger.

Mrs. Armfeldt: Beware of good deeds. They cost far too much and leave a nasty smell.

Frid the Groom: We invoke love, call out to it, beg for it, cry for it, try to mimic it. We think we own it and tell lies about it.
Petra the Maid: But we don't have it.
Frid the Groom: No my sugar pie. We are denied the love of loving. We don't have the gift.
Petra the Maid: Nor the punishment.

Carl Magnus: I shall be faithful for at least seven eternities of pleasure, eighteen false smiles and fifty-seven tender whisperings without meaning. I shall remain faithful until the big yawn do us part. In short, I shall remain faithful in my way.

Mrs. Armfeldt: Why is youth so terribly unmerciful? And who has given it permission to be that way?

Mrs. Armfeldt: [holding a cup of wine at a dinner table] My dear children and friends. According to legend, the wine is pressed from grapes whose juice gushes out like drops of blood against the pale grape skin. It is also said that to each cask filled with this wine was added a drop of milk from a young mother's breast and a drop of seed from a young stallion. These lend to the wine secret seductive powers. Whoever drinks hereof does so at his own risk and must answer for himself.

Desiree Armfeldt: Love is a perpetual juggling of three balls, the names of which are heart, words and loins. How easy it is to juggle these three balls, and how easy to drop one of them.

Mrs. Armfeldt: Who are we inviting? If they are actors, they will have to eat in the stables.

Desiree Armfeldt: We all know that each man has his dignity. We women have the right to commit manifold sins against husbands, lovers and sons, excepting one: to offend their dignity. If we do so, we are foolish and must bear the consequences. Rather, we should make of a man's dignity our foremost ally and caress it, soothe it, speak fondly to it and handle it as our dearest toy. Only then do we have a man in our hands, at our feet, or wherever else we want him at that particular moment.

Carl Magnus: I have fought 18 duels. Pistol, rapier, foil, spear, bow, poison, rifle. I have been wounded six times.

Charlotte: Men are horrible, vain and conceited. They have hair all over their bodies.

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