Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Attached is a list of quotes that would be useful for your use to commit to
memory. They are segmented according by Act so you have to use your
discretion to ask yourself if the quote can be applied to illustrate a character
trait, theme, language use or all of the above. Good Luck for your Mid-Year
Exam!
Tips:
1) What is your argument?
2) Do I have evidence to support my stand/ point?
3) Have I explained how my point will answer the question or support the
overall argument?
Cheers,
Ms Ong
9 May 2010
“In history, he cut a villainous path, and there is very little good to be said about him”
“he felt insulted if someone rose to shut the door without first asking his permission”
“with no interest in children, or talent with them”
“never conceived that children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk
straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides, and mouths shut until bidden to
speak”
“small-windowed, dark houses snuggling against the raw Massachusetts winter”
“parochial snobbery of these people”
“an air of innate resistance, even of persecution”
“they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world”
“people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combine of state and religious power
whose function was to keep the community together”
“witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes
when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom”
“witch-hunt was not however, a mere repression…”
“a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and
sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims”
“old scores could be settled on a plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the
Lord”
Act 1:
“very frightened because her slave sense has warned her that, as always, trouble in
this house eventually lands on her back”
“a strikingly beautiful girl…with an endless capacity for dissembling”
“Now she is all worry and apprehension and propriety”
“There be no unnatural cause here”
“I think you’d best go down and deny it yourself”
“That my daughter and niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the forest”
“I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it”
“my own household is discovered to be the very center of some obscene practice”
“It were sport, uncle!”
“I thought I saw- someone naked running through the trees”
“I fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me”
“some good respect in rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very
Act 2:
“I took great care. She’s tender?”
“If the crop is good I’ll buy George Jacob’s heifer. How would that please you?”
“I mean to please you, Elizabeth”
“It’s winter in here yet.”
“[holding back a full condemnation of her]”
“It is a mouse no more. I forbid her go”
“I am an official of the court!”
“it is a proper court they have now”
“Why, she’s mad”
“The town’s gone wild, I think”
“She speak of Abigail and I thought she were a saint, and to hear her.”
“Abigail brings the other girls into the court and where she walks the crowd will part
like the sea for Isreal”
“Oh, it is a black mischief”
“If the girl’s a saint now, I think it not easy to prove she’s fraud”
“She told it to me in a room alone- I have no proof for it”
“I’ll not have your suspicion anymore”
“Spare me! You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin’. Learn charity, woman.”
“An everlasting funeral marches around your heart”
“Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not”
Act 3
“there is abundant evidence in our hands to show that you have given yourself to the
reading of fortunes”
“a grave man in his sixties, of some humour and sophistication that does not,
however, interfere with an exact loyalty to his position and his cause”
“I am asked the question, and I am old enough to answer it”
“it were no witch I blamed her for. I have broke charity with the woman, I have broke
charity with her”
“Indeed! I am amazed to find you in such uproar. I have only good report of your
character, Mr Nurse”
“They all deceiving you”
“do you know that near to four hundred are in the jails from Marblehead to Lynn, and
upon my signature?”
“presses Parris away from her with a gentle but firm motion of protectiveness”
“Excellency, this man is mischief”
“entire contention of state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking
through the children”
“she will dare come here with such a tale”
“We burn a hot fire here, it melts down all concealment”
“I have until now not the slightest reason to suspect that the children may be
Act 4:
“Devil him be pleasureman in Barbados, him be singin’ and dancin’ in Barbados”
“That’s not Satan, just a poor old cow with a hatful of milk”
“That man have no authority to enter here, Marshal”
“Let you question, Hale, Excellency; I should not be surprised he have been
preaching in Andover”
“I think, sometimes, the man has a mad look these days” (about Parris)
“he wept and went his way. I think it not well the village sees him so unsteady”
“There be so many cows wanderin’ the highroads, now their masters are in jail, and
much disagreement who they will belong to now”
“It is a providence. Reverend Hale has returned to bring Rebecca Nurse to God.”
“he pleads with them, confess their crimes and save their lives”
“There is news, sir, that the court- the court must reckon with. My niece, sir, my
niece- I believe she has vanished”
“I disover- my strongbox is broke into”
“Thirty-one pound is gone. I am penniless”
“Mr Parris, you are a brainless man!”
“I cannot think they should run off except they fear to keep in Salem any more”
“Why at every execution I have seen naught but high satisfaction in the town”
“Rebecca Nurse is no Bridget Jones that lived three year with Bishop before she
married him. John Proctor is no Issac Ward that drank his family to ruin”