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Captain Gregg: Confound it, madam, my language is most controlled. And as for me morals, I lived a man 's life and I'm not ashamed of it; and, I can assure you no woman's ever been the worse for knowing me - and I'd like to know how many mealy-mouthed bluenoses can say the same.
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Captain Daniel Gregg: You must make your own life amongst the living and, whether you meet fair winds or foul, find your own way to harbor in the end.
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Mr. Coombe: In my opinion, you are the most obstinate young woman I have ever met!
Lucy Muir: Thank you, Mr. Coombe. I've always wanted to be considered obstinate!
-
Captain Gregg: My dear, never let anyone tell you to be ashamed of your figure!
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Lucy Muir: He took me unaware!
Captain Gregg: [laughs] My dear, since Eve picked the apple, no woman 's ever been taken entirely unawares.
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Lucy Muir: It's no crime to be alive!
Captain Gregg: No, my dear, sometimes it's a great inconvenience. The living can be hurt.
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Lucy Muir: [to the ghost of Captain Gregg] You'll... you'll forgive me if I... if I take a moment to get accustomed to you.
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Lucy Muir: [referring to her romance with Miles Fairley] You, yourself, said I should mix with people, that I should see... men.
Captain Gregg: I said men, not perfumed parlor snakes!
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Captain Gregg: Blasted women. *Always* make trouble when you allow one aboard...
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Lucy Muir: I don't know anything about the sea, except that it is romantic.
Captain Gregg: Hmm. That's what all landsmen think. Seamen know better.
Lucy Muir: Then why do they go to sea?
Captain Gregg: Because they haven't the sense to stay ashore.
-
Eva, Sister-in-law: [of the Captain's portrait] And what a hideous painting!
Captain Gregg: [inaudible to her] Anyone with a face like yours, madam, should steer clear of expressing such opinions!
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Lucy Muir: I'm expecting Mr. Fairley. We're having a picnic.
Martha Huggins: [dismissively] You mean he is.
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Lucy Muir: Why does he haunt? Was he murdered?
Mr. Coombe: No. He committed suicide.
Lucy Muir: [gasps] I wonder why?
Mr. Coombe: To save someone the trouble of assassinating him, no doubt!
-
Captain Gregg: [discussing Mr. Fairley] And the way he was smirking at you, like a cat in the fishmonger's! You should have slapped his face!
Lucy Muir: Why? I found him... rather charming!
Captain Gregg: "Rather charming!" Now you're starting to talk like him!
Lucy Muir: How in blazes do you want me to talk?
Captain Gregg: That's better!
-
Anna Muir as an Adult: Perhaps he did come back and talk to us? Wouldn't it be wonderful if he had? Then you'd have something - you know what I mean - to look back on with happiness.
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Lucy Muir: You can be much more alone with other people than you are by yourself, even if it's people you love. That sounds all mixed up, doesn't it?
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Lucy Muir: [to Eva & Angelica Muir] I'm sorry. It's very kind of you to want me back, but I'm going to stay. I'll manage somehow; so, please be good enough to shove off.
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Captain Daniel Gregg: It's my experience that women will do anything for money.
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Captain Daniel Gregg: I was young, but I was never foolish. Inexperienced, perhaps. Curious, as young men are. Eager for adventure. I matured early.
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Sproule - London Publisher: Bless my soul, madam, I've got to publish this bilge in order to stay in business, but I don't have to read it.
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Captain Daniel Gregg: Come back here, you blasted grampus!
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Miles Fairley: [regarding a downpour] It's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.
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Captain Daniel Gregg: [to the man entering their train compartment] CHEER OFF, YOU BLASTED MUD TURTLE! There's NO ROOM!
Man Ordered Out of Train Compartment by Captain: I beg your pardon, madam!
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Lucy Muir: You've been watching me bathe.
Miles Fairley: But always from a respectable distance.
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Lucy Muir: This is the 20th century. We must rid ourselves of the old fetishes and taboos.
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Anna Muir as an Adult: You know my weakness for sailormen.
Lucy Muir: Well, it's the first I've heard of it.
Anna Muir as an Adult: Oh, it's a lifelong vice.
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Lucy Muir: I wish you wouldn't swear. It's so ugly.
Captain Gregg: If you think that's ugly, it's a good thing you can't read me thoughts!
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Captain Daniel Gregg: Women named Lucy are always being imposed upon but, Lucia, there's a name for a amazon, for a queen.
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Captain Gregg: When a woman's kissed it's because, deep down, she wants to be kissed.
Lucy Muir: That is nothing but masculine conceit!
Captain Gregg: Nevertheless, it's true.
-
Captain Gregg: [when Lucy stops typing] Oh, what's the matter? You haven't finished your sentence.
Lucy Muir: I know. Oh, it's that word! I've never written such a word.
Captain Gregg: Well, it's a perfectly good word.
Lucy Muir: I think it's a horrid word!
Captain Gregg: Well, it means what it says, doesn't it?
Lucy Muir: All too clearly!
Captain Gregg: Well, what word would you use if you wanted to convey that meaning?
Lucy Muir: I don't use any!
Captain Gregg: Well, hang it all, Lucia! If you're going to be prudish we'll never get the book written. Now put it down the way I give it to you!
-
Captain Gregg: [dictating his memoirs to Lucy] Ah yes. The customs are Marseilles are different to any...
Lucy Muir: Different *from*.
Captain Gregg: *To* or *from*, who cares? This isn't a blasted literary epic, it's the unvarnished story of a seaman's life!
Lucy Muir: It certainly is unvarnished!
Captain Gregg: Well, smear on your own varnish, change the grammar all you please, but leave the guts in it!
-
Lucy Muir: You seem to be very... earthly for a spirit.
Capt. Daniel Gregg: And you, madam, are enough to make a saint turn to blasphemy!
-
Capt. Daniel Gregg: [to Lucy, who is sleeping] How'd you have loved the North Cape and the fjords in the midnight sun... to sail across the reef at Barbados, where the blue water turns to green... to the Falklands, where a southerly gale rips the whole sea white! What we've missed, Lucia... what we've both missed.
[he slowly begins to vanish]
Capt. Daniel Gregg: Goodbye... me darling.
[he vanishes completely and the open window closes by itself]
-
Lucy Muir: [final lines]
[the spirits of Lucy and Captain Gregg are descending the staircase as Martha passes them going up with a glass of warm milk]
Lucy Muir: Martha?
[Martha doesn't hear her. With a slightly sad smile, Lucy turns away]
-
Martha Huggins: [trying to comfort the weeping Lucy after Lucy's learned the truth about Miles, almost crying herself] There, there... he ain't worth it, blast his eyes! He ain't worth it!
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Lucy Muir: [speaking about her late husband] He was an architect. He came down to plan an addition to my father's library. I was only seventeen. I remember I'd... I'd just finished a novel in which the heroine was kissed in the rose garden and lived happily ever after, so when Edwin kissed me in the orchard...
Capt. Daniel Gregg: But it was different after you'd left the orchard.
-
Lucy Muir: I suppose you're jealous because no one put on mourning for you!
Capt. Daniel Gregg: That shows how little you know about it.
Lucy Muir: Some poor misguided female, no doubt!
Capt. Daniel Gregg: *Three* poor misguided females, to be exact.
Lucy Muir: I should... I should think you'd be ashamed of it instead of boasting about it!
Capt. Daniel Gregg: Why? They misguided themselves; I never raised a finger to help them.
-
Capt. Daniel Gregg: [old Mrs. Muir has just died; Captain Gregg appears] And now you'll never be tired again. Come, Lucia.
[he holds out his hands to her]
Capt. Daniel Gregg: Come, me dear.
[her hands reach up and take his; she rises to her feet, young again]
-
Capt. Daniel Gregg: I didn't lead a very wise life meself, but it was a, it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come of age very quickly through shipwreck and disaster.
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Lucy Muir: I never understood the sea before or the men who go to sea. Why did you write the book, Daniel? It wasn't merely to save the house for me.
Capt. Daniel Gregg: Partly that... for you and the retired seamen you leave it to in your will... but mostly to help people understand... to *make* them understand. All those comfortable swabs who sit at home on their beam-ends, reveling in the luxuries that seamen risk their lives to bring to them... and despising the poor devils if they so much as touch a drop of rum and even sneering at people who try to do them some good... like you and me.
-
Lucy Muir: I feel so useless. Here I am nearly halfway through life, and what have I done?
Martha Huggins: I know what I done, alright. Cooked enough steaks to choke an hippopotamus and kept the name of Huggins as fair as the day I found it.
Lucy Muir: You've led a very useful life, Martha. I have nothing to show for all my years.
Martha Huggins: I suppose you call Miss Anna nothing.
Lucy Muir: Oh, heavens. I can't take any credit for her. She just happened.
Martha Huggins: Yes. That's what my old mum always used to say. I was the 11th.
-
Lucy Muir: Daniel, what did your aunt do when you ran away to sea?
Captain Gregg: Oh, probably thank heaven there was no-one around to fill her house with mongrel puppies and track mud on her carpets.
Lucy Muir: Did she write to you?
Captain Gregg: Every Sunday for seven years. I was at sea when she died. It was the year I got me mate's ticket. What are you thinking about, Lucia?
Lucy Muir: I'm thinking how lonely she must have felt, with her clean carpets.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Quotes
Extended Reading
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Language: English Release date: June 18, 1947