When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperone Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting... See full summary »

George Emerson: He's the sort who can't know anyone intimately, least of all a woman. He doesn't know what a woman is. He wants you for a possession, something to look at, like a painting or an ivory box. Something to own and to display. He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.
Freddy Honeychurch: Come and have a bathe.
George Emerson: I'd like that.
Reverend Beebe: [laughs] That's the best conversation opening I've ever heard. "How do you do. Come and have a bathe."
Mr. Emerson: I don't care what I see outside. My vision is within! Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!
Reverend Beebe: It's not coincidental that you're here now, when one comes to reflect on it.
George Emerson: I *have* reflected. It's fate. Everything is fate.
Reverend Beebe: You've not reflected at all. Let me cross-examine you. Where did you meet Mr. Vyse, who will marry Miss Honeychurch?
George Emerson: The National Gallery.
Reverend Beebe: Looking at Italian art! You see, you talk of coincidence and fate. You're naturally drawn to things Italian, as are we and all our friends, aren't we, Freddy? That narrows the field immeasurably.
George Emerson: It is fate. But call it Italy if it pleases you, Vicar.
Charlotte Bartlett: I shall never forgive myself.
Lucy Honeychurch: You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself.
Charlotte Bartlett: We all have our little foibles, and mine is the prompt settling of accounts.
Lucy Honeychurch: How quickly these accidents do happen and then one returns to the old life.
George Emerson: I don't. I mean, something's happened to me... and to you.
Cecil Vyse: You don't love me, evidently. I dare say you're right not to, but... it would help a little, hurt a little less, if I knew why.
Lucy Honeychurch: Because you're the sort who can't know anyone intimately, least of all a woman.
[Cecil looks taken aback and hurt]
Lucy Honeychurch: Well, I don't mean exactly that, but you will go on asking questions!
Mr. Emerson: Women like looking at a view. Men don't.
New Lucy: Don't you agree that, on one's first visit to Florence, one must have a room with a view?
Lucy Honeychurch: He has misbehaved from the first. In fact, he has behaved abominably.
Mr. Emerson: Not abominably. He only tried when he should not have tried.
Eleanor Lavish: A young girl, transfigured by Italy! And why shouldn't she be transfigured? It happened to the Goths!
Lucy Honeychurch: Mother doesn't like me playing Beethoven. She says I'm always peevish afterwards.
Reverend Beebe: Naturally one would be... stirred up.
George Emerson: My father says there is only one perfect view, and that's the view of the sky over our heads.
Cecil Vyse: I expect your father has been reading Dante.
Lucy Honeychurch: Mother is calling, I have got to go. They trust me.
Mr. Emerson: Why should they, when you deceived everyone, including yourself?
The Reverend Mr. Eager: Remember the facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism.
Mr. Emerson: Built by faith indeed! That simply means the workers weren't paid properly.
Cecil Vyse: You must forgive me if I say stupid things. My brain has gone to pieces.
[last lines]
George Emerson: Kiss me, dear. Again.
Lucy Honeychurch: I'm reading.
George Emerson: What are you reading?
Lucy Honeychurch: It's from Freddy.
George Emerson: What does he say?
Lucy Honeychurch: Silly boy. He thinks he's being dignified. I mean, everybody knew we were going away in the spring.
Sir Harry Otway: The train service has improved so!
Cecil Vyse: I always travel by balloon.
[first lines]
Charlotte Bartlett: This is not at all what we were led to expect.
Lucy Honeychurch: I thought we were going to see the Arno.
Charlotte Bartlett: The signora distinctly wrote, South rooms, with a view and close together, instead of which she has given us North rooms without a view and a long way apart.
Cecil Vyse: So you *do* love me, little thing.
Cecil Vyse: Temper, Lucy. Temper, please!
Eleanor Lavish: Smell! A true Florentine smell. Inhale, my dear. Deeper! Every city, let me tell you, has its own smell.
Cecil Vyse: I have no profession. My attitude - quite an indefensible one - is that as long as I am no trouble to anyone, I have the right to do as I like. It is, I dare say, an example of my decadence.
Mr. Emerson: You love George. You love the boy body and soul, as he loves you.
Lucy Honeychurch: [crying] But of course I do. What did you all think?
Charlotte Bartlett: I would like to thank your father personally for his kindness to us.
George Emerson: You can't. He's in his bath.
Charlotte Bartlett: In my small way I am a woman of the world. And I know where things can lead to.
Freddy Honeychurch: Why does she look like that?
Lucy Honeychurch: Like what?
Freddy Honeychurch: [imitating Charlotte] Like Charlotte Bartlett.
Lucy Honeychurch: Because, she *is* Charlotte Bartlett.
Lucy Honeychurch: Why need mother hear of it?
Charlotte Bartlett: Well, you tell her everything, don't you?
Lucy Honeychurch: I suppose I do, generally.
Charlotte Bartlett: There's such a beautiful confidence between you. One would hate to break it. And as I have said before, I am to blame.
Lucy Honeychurch: I wouldn't want mother to think so.
Charlotte Bartlett: She will think so, if you tell her.
Lucy Honeychurch: I shall never speak of it, either to mother or to anyone.
Charlotte Bartlett: We will both be as silent as the grave.
Cecil Vyse: What is it about Italy that makes lady novelists reach such summits of absurdity?