Quotes

The Best House in London

Sir Francis Leybourne: [the Attache is sobbing] I thought you people were supposed to be inscrutable?
Chinese Trade Attache: Please, Sir Francis, China doesn't want any more opium.
Sir Francis Leybourne: Oh, do be sensible. You chaps have already lost one war with Great Britain about this.
Chinese Trade Attache: But to force us to buy it...
Sir Francis Leybourne: Well, you signed a treaty agreeing to!
Chinese Trade Attache: Your gunboats were right up our Yangtze!
Sir Francis Leybourne: No use getting hysterical, Mr Feng.
Chinese Trade Attache: Then let me appeal to our friendship; those happy weekends I used to spend at your townhouse; your late wife was always so kind to me. More than kind. She...
Sir Francis Leybourne: She was an eccentric about the inferior races. My dear fellow, I've put a lot of money into that opium plantation. Damn it, it's hard enough to get the Indians to harvest the stuff. Blasted natives! You pay them two pounds ten a year and they're useless.
Chinese Trade Attache: If you could see what the opium does to our people; they lie about the streets like dead flies.
Sir Francis Leybourne: Well, get them to use a little self-discipline, man. Self control - works wonders. Look at the English!

Josephine Pacefoot: The bruised flowers of men's lust. They don't go on the streets from choice. As long as the only industrial careers open to women are those that pay starvation wages, how else can they keep alive? Only by the farm of their bodies!

Josephine Pacefoot: What for you, sir, was just an hour of pleasure, for them, means a lifetime of regret.

Babette: My dear, Francis, half the art of the women of the world consists of doing disgusting things - delicately.

Sir Francis Leybourne: Our clients will be drawn only from gentlemen of rank, prominence, social standing, and wealth. None of your middle class rabble.
Babette: A tolerated house in England? Soon we will have the Queen eloping with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Sir Francis Leybourne: That is unpardonably frivolous.

Mr. Mason: In an ordered society, such women must be - available.
Mr. Fortnum: They fulfill functions to which a gentleman would otherwise be obliged to subject his wife.

Josephine Pacefoot: Oh, dear. Am I putting temptation your way? Must I now expect you to - lurch at me?

Walter Leybourne: We'll have the finest house in Europe. I'll test every girl, personally.
Babette: It's so wonderful to have something to do together.
Walter Leybourne: We'll call it the Libertine Club: Temple of Refined Perversity, Emporium of Excess.
[spanks Babette's bottom]
Walter Leybourne: No itch will be left uncatered for. England - I'll fan your embers.
Babette: Fan mine, again.

Josephine Pacefoot: That's eight girls now. First, Molly. Then, Lilly, Anais, Prudence, Emily, Charlotte, Arabella, and dear Phoebe. They've just vanished.
Benjamin Oakes: And you can't put them *all* down to Jack the Ripper.

Benjamin Oakes: Miss Pacefoot, you can't have dealings with an opium plantation.
Josephine Pacefoot: Why not?
Benjamin Oakes: Because, it's - commerce. Trade.

Sir Francis Leybourne: There! You mutinous native dogs, fire if you dare! Upon the unconquerable flag of the British Empire.

Chinese Trade Attache: Miss Pacefoot, I beseech you, in the name of 40 million suffering Chinese, do not set that vile plantation to work again.
Josephine Pacefoot: Mr. Feng, if those properties Uncle left me are to be used to finance my industrial training home, what alternative have I? A Belgravia Hall, that is already doing noble work for deprived humanity. So, all I can use are the profits from the opium crop. I'm sorry, Mr. Feng, but England's social problems must come first.

Josephine Pacefoot: Flora, dear, we are not what you feared us to be.
Benjamin Oakes: We are going to take you to a place where you'll be taken care of and given work.
Josephine Pacefoot: And chastity will be preserved.
Flora: Bleedin' 'ell!

Benjamin Oakes: Miss Pacefoot, it has been proved, scientifically proved, that prolonged arithmetic is too severe for the female brain.

Flora's Mother: Mrs. Butler down the hall got 15 for her Venessa - and she was damaged goods, mind.
Flora: What you argy-barging for, you silly cow?
Flora's Mother: Our Flora, she's untouched. Pure virgin. Ain't you, Flo?

Walter Leybourne: It requires some expertness and practice for a gentleman with a mustache to take jelly in an inoffensive manner.

Josephine Pacefoot: It's very confusing. I'm afraid I have this sudden desire to lie down and at the same time - I have an overwhelming urge to giggle.

Count Pandolfo: A milestone in aviation history. And who will know about it? Nobodies. Where is that Mr. Oakes? Still busy with the virgins, I suppose.

Walter Leybourne: Now, forgive me. I shall print kisses on your knees. On the backs of your knees. What has to be done, has to be done!

Josephine Pacefoot: Would you look the other way, Mr. Oakes. My bodice is disarranged.

Little Emmeline Pankhurst: [singing] But, I love my pussy, My pretty little pussy, Because my little pussy is so small

Seamstress: If the good Lord had meant us to fly in the air, he'd have put feathers on our bosoms.

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