The Crucible - Quote Identification

"It's winter in here yet."

Proctor

“You think it God’s work you should never lose a child, nor grand-child either, and I bury all but one?”

Mrs. Putnum

“Oh, Francis, I wish you had some evil in you that you might know me! “

Proctor

“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.”

Abigail

"I see no light of God in that man."

Proctor

“I have this morning signed away the soul of Rebecca Nurse, Your Honor. I’ll not conceal it, my hand shakes yet as with a wound!”

Hale

“I take it on my soul, but who else may surely tell us what person murdered my babies?”

Mrs. Putnum

“There is danger for me. I dare not step outside at night!”

Parris

“I am thirty-three time in court in my life. And always plaintiff, too.”

Giles

“I cannot sleep for dreamin‘; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you comin’ through some door.”

Abigail

“There is either obedience or the church will burn like Hell is burning!”

Parris

“…if you believe I may do only good work in the world, and yet be secretly bound to Satan, then I must tell you, sir, I do not believe it.”

Elizabeth

“…let us go to God for the cause of it. There is prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it. Let us rather blame ourselves…”

Rebecca Nurse

“I have been hurt Mr. Danforth; I have seen my blood runnin’ out! I have been near to murdered every day because I done my duty pointing out the Devil’s people–and this is my reward? To be mistrusted, denied, questioned like a–”

Abigail

“I come to do the Devil’s work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!”

Hale

“I’ll not hang with you! I love God, I love God”

Mary Warren

“This is a hearing; you cannot clap me for contempt of a hearing.”

Giles

“I have three children–how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I have sold my friends?”

Proctor

“I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me … I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I kept!”

Elizabeth

“I pray you, leap not to witchcraft … they will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house.”

Parris

“Have no fear now–we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!”

Hale

“Have no fear now–we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!”

Giles

“Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption!”

Danforth

“I’ll fly to Mama. Let me fly!”

Betty

“I tell you straight, Mister–I have seen marvels in this court. I have seen people choked before my eyes by spirits; I have seen them stuck by pins and slashed by daggers. I have until this moment not the slightest reason to suspect that the children may be deceiving me.”

Danforth

“I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation.”

Proctor

“Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated.”

Hale

“Pontius Pilate! God will not let you wash your hands of this!”

Proctor

“Man, remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”

Hale

“Man, remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”

Hale

“But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not?”

Danforth

“Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.”

Hale

“He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”

Elizabeth

“I want to open myself! . . . I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”

Abigail

“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—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.”

Danforth

“There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!”

Mrs. Putnam

“I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!”

Abigail

“I'll plead no more! I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!”

Proctor

“I have seen too many frightful proofs in court—the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!”

Hale

“Do you take it upon yourself to determine what this court shall believe and what it shall set aside? . . . .This is the highest court of the supreme government of this province, do you know it?”

Danforth

“A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud—God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!”

Proctor

“I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs. Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it!”

Proctor

“I will fall like an ocean on that court!”

Proctor

“Think on cause, man, and let you help me to discover it. For there’s your way, believe it, there is your only way, when such confusion strikes upon the world.”

Hale

“Mr. Danforth, I gave them all my word no harm would come to them for signing this.”

Francis Nurse

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

Proctor

“I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.”

Proctor

“Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.”

Proctor

“A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back”

Rebecca Nurse

“We vote by name in this society, not by acreage.”

Proctor

“I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God that day.”

Proctor

“I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you.”

Elizabeth

“A man will not cast away his good name. You surely know that.”

Danforth

“Can you speak one minute without we land in Hell again? I am sick of Hell!”

Proctor

“Oh, Majesty! Comin’, comin’! Tituba, he’s here, His Majesty’s come!”

Sarah Good

“How do you know, then, that you are not a witch?”

Harthorn

“I give you pretty dress to wear, and put you way high up in the air, and you gone fly back to Barbados!”

Tituba

“In the sight of the congregation she were twice this year put out of this meetin’ house for laughter during prayer.”

Proctor

“You load one oak of mine and you’ll fight to drag it home!”

Putnam

“This will set us all to arguin’ again.”

Rebecca Nurse

“Why, then I must find it and join it.”

Proctor

“He had no right to sell it. It stands clear in my grand-father’s will that all the land between the river and -”

Putnam

“Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away - make your peace!”

Proctor

“I think not, or you should surely know that Cain were an upright man, and yet he did kill Abel.”

Parris

“Goody Proctor always kept poppets.”

Abigail

“In the proper place - where my beasts are bedded. On the last night of my joy, some eight months past.”

Proctor

“…when I summoned the con-gregation for John Proctor’s excommnnication there were hardly thirty people come to hear it.”

Parris

“There be a hundred or more, they say. Goody Ballard is one; Isaiah Goodkind is one.”

Elizabeth

“I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. I am not that man.”

Proctor

“Let you fear nothing! Another judgment waits us all!”

Rebecca Nurse

“Andover is remedied. The court returns there on Friday, and will resume examinations.”

Danforth

“But a poppet will keep fifteen years, will it not?”

Harthorne