Other Titles • The Lion in Winter • Der Löwe im Winter (1970)
Quotes from The Lion in Winter (1968)
1
Eleanor: In a world where carpenters get resurrected, everything is possible.
(25 votes)
2
Eleanor: I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy. I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.
(23 votes)
3
Henry II: The Vexin's mine. Philip II: By what authority? Henry II: It's got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.
(22 votes)
4
[Upon seeing his wife after she arrives for Christmas Court] Henry II: HA! What shall we hang... the holly, or each other?
(22 votes)
5
Eleanor: [to her jewelry] I'd hang you from the nipples, but you'd shock the children.
(20 votes)
6
Eleanor: What family doesn't have its ups and downs?
(2 votes)
7
Prince John: Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out! Prince Richard: Let's strike a flint and see.
(3 votes)
8
[Gazing into a mirror] Eleanor: My, what a lovely girl. How could her king have left her?
(2 votes)
9
Eleanor: Henry's bed is Henry's province, he can people it with sheep for all I care... which on occasion he has done.
(2 votes)
10
Eleanor: Henry? Henry II: Hmmm? Eleanor: I have a confession. Henry II: Yes? Eleanor: I don't much like our children!
(2 votes)
11
Henry II: Now see here, boy... Philip II: I am a king - I am no man's "boy"! Henry II: A king? Because you put your ass on purple cushions?
12
Eleanor: You don't dare go! Henry II: Say that again at noon, you'll say it to my horse's ass! Lamb, I'll be rid of you by Easter: you can count your reign in days!
13
Henry II: The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.
14
[to Prince John] Prince Geoffrey: If you're a prince, there's hope for every ape in Africa.
15
Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.
16
Henry II: Oh God, but I do love being king!
17
Henry II: My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, a king at twenty-one, the ablest soldier of an able time. He led men well, he cared for justice when he could and ruled, for thirty years, a state as great as Charlemagne's. He married out of love, a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen. She bore him many children. But no sons. King Henry had no sons. He had three whiskered things but he disowned them Henry II: [to his sons] You're not mine! We're not connected! I deny you! None of you will get my crown, I leave you nothing and I wish you plague! May all your children breach and die! Henry II: [storms out the corridor, turns and looks back] My Boys are gone Henry II: [he starts unsteadily down the corridor] I've lost my boys Henry II: [he stops, glares towards the Deity] You dare to damn me, do You? Well, I damn you back Henry II: [like a biblical figure, shaking his fist to the sky] GODDAMN YOU! Henry II: [moving blindly down the corridor again] My boys are gone. I've lost my boys. Oh, Jesus, all my boys... [collapses, weeping on the stairs]
18
Eleanor: You look fit. War agrees with you. I keep informed; I follow all your slaughters from a distance. Do sit down. Prince Richard: Is this an audience... a good night hug with kisses... or an ambush? Eleanor: Let's hope it's a reunion.
19
Henry II: I want to reach a settlement. I left you with too little earlier, Philip II: Yes, nothing is too little.
20
Henry II: You know me well enough to know I can't be stopped. Eleanor: I don't have to stop you - I have only to delay you. Every enemy you have has friends in Rome... will cost you time. Henry II: What is this? I'm not mouldering - my pate's not peeling off. I'm good for years. Eleanor: How many years? Suppose I hold you back for one? I can - it's possible. Suppose your first son dies? Ours did - it's possible. Suppose you're daughtered next? We were - that, too, is possible. How old is "Daddy" then? What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget? Henry II: It's sweet of you to care. Eleanor: And when you die - which is regrettable, but necessary - what will happen to frail Alais and her pleumy prince? You can't think Richard's going to wait for your grotesque to grow. Henry II: You wouldn't let him do a thing like that. Eleanor: Let him? I'd push him through the nursery door! Henry II: You're not that cruel. Eleanor: Don't fret. We'll wait until you're dead to do it.
21
Eleanor: [after Henry tells Eleanor he wants their marriage annulled] Out Eleanor... in Alais. Why? Henry II: A new wife, wife, will bear me sons. Eleanor: That is the single thing of which I would have thought you had enough.
22
Henry II: [Henry brings candles into the dungeon] What we do in dungeons needs the shades of day. I stole the candles from the chapel. Jesus won't begrudge them and the chaplain works for me.
23
Henry II: We're in the cellar and you're going back to prison and my life is wasted and we've lost each other... and you're smiling. Eleanor: It's the way I register despair. There's everything in life but hope. Henry II: We're both alive... and for all I know that's what hope is.
24
Henry II: We're off to Rome to see the Pope. Princess Alais: He's excommunicated you again.
25
Henry II: When I bellow, bellow back.
26
Henry II: When the king is off his ass, nobody sleeps!
27
Henry II: Where's a priest? Somebody fetch me a priest! YOU! Fetch me a bishop!
28
Prince Richard: You're so deceitful you can't ask for water when you're thirsty. We could tangle spiders in the webs you weave.
29
Princess Alais: Kings, queens, knights everywhere you look and I'm the only pawn. I haven't got a thing to lose - that makes me dangerous.
30
Henry II: I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once.
31
Henry II: I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations - you've burbled every bit of strategy you've got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won't, and I've told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that's what winning looks like!
32
Henry II: I'm villifying you for God's sake - pay attention!
33
Eleanor: I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice!
34
Henry II: Well I'm off. Eleanor: To Rome? Henry II: That's where they keep the Pope!
35
Eleanor: What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in? Henry II: Give me a little peace. Eleanor: A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought.
36
Henry II: I haven't kept the Great Bitch in the keep for ten years out of passionate attachment.
37
Eleanor: Well, that's the way deals are made. We've got him if we want him. He'll sell us all, you know... but only if he thinks we think he won't.
38
Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings. Eleanor: There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.
39
Prince Richard: So! The royal corkscrew finds ME twisted?
40
Prince John: A knife! He's got a knife! Eleanor: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
41
Eleanor: You're not an assassin. Prince Richard: Look again.
42
Henry II: More Brandy wine? They were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left!
43
Prince Geoffrey: I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. [smiles] Prince Geoffrey: We're a knowledgeable family.
44
Henry II: I'm 50 now. Good God, boy, I'm the oldest man I know! I've got a decade on the pope!
45
Prince Richard: I never heard a corpse complain of how it got so cold.
46
Eleanor: How dear of you to let me out of prison. Henry II: It's only for the holidays.
47
Henry II: I want no women in my life. Princess Alais: You're tired. Henry II: I could have conquered Europe - all of it - but I had women in my life.
48
Prince John: You stink. You're a stinker and you stink.
49
Eleanor: Henry Henry II: Madam Eleanor: Did you ever love me? Henry II: No Eleanor: Good. That will make this pleasanter.
50
Eleanor: And that's to be the king. Prince Geoffrey: And I'm to be his Chancellor. Has he told you? John will rule the country, while I run it. That is to say he gets to spend the taxes that I raise. Eleanor: How nice for you. Prince Geoffrey: It's not as nice as being king. Henry II: We've made you Duke of Brittany, is that so little? Prince Geoffrey: No one ever thinks of crown and mentions Geoff, why is that? Henry II: Isn't being chancellor power enough? Prince Geoffrey: It's not the power I feel deprived of; it's the mention I miss. There's no affection for me here; you wouldn't think I'd want that, would you. Prince Geoffrey: [He leaves the room]
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
Movie Database
In Theaters
