Witness for the Prosecution

Witness for the Prosecution Quotes

Leonard Vole is arrested on suspicion of murdering an elderly acquaintance. He employs an experienced but aging barrister as his defense attorney.

Sir Wilfrid: [getting progressively more agitated] The question is whether you were lying then or are you lying now... or whether in fact you are a chronic and habitual LIAR!
Leonard Vole: What are you looking for?
Christine Vole: My accordion.
Leonard Vole: [stepping on it] I think I've found it.
Christine Vole: Step on it again. It's still breathing.
Christine Vole: Damn you. Damn you. Damn you! Damn you!
Cockney Woman: I'll give ya somethin' to dream about, Mister. Wanna kiss me, ducky?
Sir Wilfrid: I'd better take that thermos of cocoa with me. It helps me wash down down the pills.
Miss Plimsoll: Let me see. My learned patient is not above substituting brandy for cocoa.
[opens thermos and smells]
Miss Plimsoll: Sniff, sniff. It is cocoa. So sorry.
Sir Wilfrid: If you were a woman, Miss Plimsoll, I would strike you.
Sir Wilfrid: My Lord, may I also remind my learned friend that his witness, by her own admission, has already violated so many oaths that I am surprised the Testament did not LEAP FROM HER HAND when she was sworn here today! I doubt if anything is to be gained by questioning you any further! That will be all, Frau Helm!
Sir Wilfrid: Kings, prime ministers, archbishops, even barristers have stood in the dock.
Leonard Vole: But this is England, where I thought you never arrest, let alone convict, people for crimes they have not committed.
Sir Wilfrid: We try not to make a habit of it.
Christine Vole: It isn't even my letter paper! I write my letters on small, blue paper with my initials on it?
Sir Wilfrid: Like these?
[pulling out a sheaf of letters on blue paper]
Christine Vole: Damn you! Damn you! Let me go! Let me get out of here!
Sir Wilfrid: We've disposed of the gallows, but there's still that banana peel somewhere.
[last lines]
Miss Plimsoll: [hands Sir Wilfrid his thermos bottle] Sir Wilfrid, you've forgotten your brandy!
Sir Wilfrid: Give me a match.
Leonard Vole: Sorry, I don't carry matches.
Sir Wilfrid: [to Brogan-Moore] I thought you said I'd like him.
Leonard Vole: But I do have a lighter.
Sir Wilfrid: You're quite right, I do like him.
Brogan-Moore: Touching isn't it? The way he counts on his wife.
Sir Wilfrid: Yes, like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade.
Sir Wilfrid: I am constantly surprised that women's hats do not provoke more murders.
Miss Plimsoll: Wilfrid the Fox! That's what they call him, and that's what he is!
Janet Mackensie: Perhaps you can help me, your Lordship. Six months, I have applied for my hearing aid and I am still waiting for it.
Judge: My dear madame. Considering the rubbish that is being talked nowadays, you are missing very little.
[Miss Plimsoll discovers cigars hidden in Sir Wilfrid's cane]
Sir Wilfrid: You could be jailed for that. You had no search warrant for my cane!
Miss Plimsoll: I almost married a lawyer once. I was in attendance when he had his appendectomy, and we became engaged as soon as he could sit up... and then peritonitis set in and he went just like that!
Sir Wilfrid: He certainly was a lucky lawyer.
Mrs. French: You know, maybe I'll take a glass of sherry, myself. I feel like Christmas, somehow. Ha-ha.
Miss Plimsoll: Our nap! Sir Wilfrid! Our nap!
Sir Wilfrid: You go on ahead. Start it without me.
Christine Vole: You think Mrs. French looked upon Leonard as a son? Or a nephew?
Brogan-Moore: I do. An entirely natural and understandable relationship.
Christine Vole: What hypocrites you are in this county.
Christine Vole: You are burning my nose.
Miss Plimsoll: Sir Wilfrid. Sir Wilfrid! You're dawdling again.
[Claps hands twice]
Mrs. French: Do sit down and don't mind Janet, Mr. Vole, its just that she's terribly Scotch.
Christine Vole: He is not my husband. Leonard and I went through a form of marriage in Hamburg, but, I had a husband living at the time somewhere in East Germany in the Russian zone.
Sir Wilfrid: Did you tell Leonard?
Christine Vole: I did not! It would have been stupid to tell him. He would not have married me and I would have been left behind to starve in the rubble.
Brogan-Moore: But, he did marry you and brought you safely to this country. Don't you think you should be very grateful to him?
Christine Vole: One can get very tired of gratitude.
Leonard Vole: [in Christine's bombed-out hovel] It's horrible! In a gemutlich sort of way.
Sir Wilfrid: Doctors! They've deprived me of everything: alcohol, tobacco, female companionship!
Miss Plimsoll: I shall have a very serious talk with Doctor Harrison. It was a mistake to let you come back here. I shall take you directly to a rest home or resort. Some place quiet, far off, like Bermuda.
Sir Wilfrid: Shut up. You just want to see me in those nasty shorts.
Mr. Myers: I hope we are not to be deprived of the learned and stimulating company of Sir Wilfrid?
Sir Wilfrid: Aw, Miss Plimsoll, how yearning you look!
Miss Plimsoll: Is there too much of a draft? Should I roll up the window?
Sir Wilfrid: Just roll up your mouth, you talk too much. If I had known how much you talk I'd never have come out of my coma.
Sir Wilfrid: I could probably think better if you gave me one of those cigars.
Miss Plimsoll: It's beddy-bye. We better go upstairs now, get undressed and lie down.
Sir Wilfrid: We? What a nauseating prospect.
Sir Wilfrid: [to Brogan-Moore] Oh, pardon, Mrs. Vole, handle her gently especially when you break the news of the arrest. Bear in mind, she's a foreigner. So be prepared for hysterics and even a fainting spell. Better have smelling salts ready, a box of tissues and a nip of brandy.
Christine Vole: [Enters Mrs. Vole] I do not think that will be necessary. I never faint because I'm not sure that I will fall gracefully and I never use smelling salts because they puff up the eyes. I'm Christine Vole.
Leonard Vole: How are you fixed for sugar?
Christine Vole: I could use some.
Sir Wilfrid: Would you like a cigar? Pardon me.
[Takes cigar out of Mayhew's suit pocket]
Inspector Hearne: That's very kind of you Sir Wilfrid.
Sir Wilfrid: I better not, it would constitute a bribe.
[Places cigar into his own suit pocket]
Bar Patron: Hey Fräulein, show us some legs!
Mayhew: She and her husband had lived abroad for many years in British Nigeria. He was in the colonial service. He died in '45 of a heart attack.
Sir Wilfrid: Oh, please, Mayhew, not while I'm smoking.
Miss Plimsoll: Teeny weeny flight of steps, Sir Wilfrid, we mustn't forget we've had a teeny weeny heart attack.
Sir Wilfrid: Your husband loves you very much, does he not?
Christine Vole: Leonard? He worships the ground I walk on.
Sir Wilfrid: And you?
Christine Vole: You want to know too much. Auf wiedersehen, gentlemen.
Sir Wilfrid: Might as well get a bigger box of more mothballs and put me away to.
Miss Plimsoll: You know, I feel sorry for that nice Mr. Vole. And not just because he was arrested, but that wife of his, she must be German. I suppose that's what happens when we let our boys cross the Channel. They go crazy! Personally, I think the government should do something about those foreign wives. Like an embargo. How else can we take care of our own surplus. Don't you agree Sir Wilfrid?

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