The Crucible - Act I & II Quotes

I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character.

I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character.

Reverend Parris

They want slaves, not such as I. Let them send to Barbados for that. I will not black my face for any of them!

Abigail WIlliams

I’d not call it sick; the Devil’s touch is heavier than sick. It’s death, y’know, it’s death drivin’ into them, forked and hoofed.

Mrs. Putnam

I have laid seven babies unbaptized in the earth. Believe me, sir, you never saw more hearty babies born. And yet, each would wither in my arms the very night of their birth. I have spoke nothin’, but my heart has clamored intimations. And now, this year, my Ruth, my only—I see her turning strange. A secret child she has become this year, and shrivels like a sucking mouth were pullin’ on her life too.

Mrs. Putnam

Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Come down, speak to them—pray with them. They’re thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely you’ll pray with them.

Putnam

Abby, we’ve got to tell. Witchery’s a hangin’ error, a hangin’ like they done in Boston two year ago! We must tell the truth, Abby! You’ll only be whipped for dancin’, and the other things!

Mary Warren

We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breath 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. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!

Abigail Williams

I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion whenever I come near! Or did I dream that? It’s she put me out, you cannot pretend it were you. I saw your face when she put me out, and you loved me then and you do now!

Abigail Williams

I think she’ll wake in time. Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she’ll wake when she tires of it. 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

There is prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it. Let us rather blame ourselves and—

Rebecca Nurse

I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris..There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God anymore.

John Proctor

I am not used to this poverty; I left a thrifty business in the Barbados to serve the Lord. I do not fathom it, why am I persecuted here? I cannot offer one proposition but there be a howling riot of argument. I have often wondered if the Devil be in it somewhere . . . .

Reverend Parris

You people seem not to comprehend that a minister is the Lord’s man in the parish . . . .

Reverend Parris

Wherefore is everybody suing everybody else? Think on it now, it’s a deep thing, and dark as a pit.

Giles Corey

. . . [these books] are weighted with authority.

Reverend Hale

We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone, and I must tell you all that I shall not proceed unless you are prepared to believe me if I should find no bruise of Hell upon her.

Reverend Hale

Here is the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises.

Reverend Hale

Last night—mark this—I tried and tried and could not say my prayers. And then she close her book and walks out of the house, and suddenly —mark this—I could pray again!

Giles Corey

Sometimes I wake and find myself standing in the open doorway and not a stitch on my body! I always hear her laughing in my sleep. I hear her singing her Barbados songs and tempting me . . .

Abigail Williams

. . . I say, ‘You lie, Devil, you lie!’ And then he come one stormy night to me and he say, ‘Look! I have white people belong to me.’ And I look—and there was Goody Good.

Tituba

Look at her God-given innocence; her soul is so tender; we must protect her, Tituba; the Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the flesh of the pure lamb. God will bless you for your help.

Reverend Hale

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.

Abigail Williams

The Deputy Governor promise hangin’ if they’ll not confess, John. The town’s gone wild, I think. She speak of Abigail, and I thought she were a saint, to hear her. Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel.

Elizabeth Proctor

If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she’s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone—I have no proof for it.

John Proctor

When she came into the court I say to myself, I must not accuse this woman, for she sleep in ditches, and so very old and poor. But then—then she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin’ up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and then . . . .

Mary Warren

I must tell you, sir, I will be gone every day now. I am amazed you do not see what weighty work we do.

Mary Warren

The Devil’s loose in Salem, Mr. Proctor; we must discover where he’s hiding!

Mary Warren

Oh, the noose, the noose is up!

Elizabeth Proctor

I will curse her hotter than the oldest cinder in hell. But pray, begrudge me not my anger!

John Proctor

Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.

Reverend Hale

There are them that will swear to anything before they’ll hang; have you never thought of that?

Reverend Hale

Believe me, Mr. Nurse, if Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing’s left to stop the whole green world from burning. Let you rest upon the justice of the court; . . .

Reverend Hale

There is a misty plot afoot so subtle we should be criminal to cling to old respects and ancient friendships. I have seen too many frightful proofs in court—the Devil is alive in Salem . . .!

Reverend Hale

Now believe me, Proctor, how heavy be the law, all its tonnage I do carry on my back tonight. I have a warrant for your wife.

Ezekiel Cheever

Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers? I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem—vengeance is walking Salem. 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!

John Proctor

The jails are packed—our greatest judges sit in Salem now—and hangin’s promised. Man we must look to cause proportionate. Were there murder done, perhaps, and never brought to light? Abomination? Some secret blasphemy that stinks to Heaven? 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.

Reverend Hale

Make your peace with it! Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away—make your peace! Peace. It’s a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow!

John Proctor