quotes

• There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!
• 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! This warrant’s vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!
• A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth!…God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!
• The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone
• Don’t lie!..She comes to me while I sleep; she’s always making me dream corruptions!
• the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!
• Oh, the noose, the noose is up!
• Elizabeth, with great fear: I will fear nothing.
• She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out
• I am not empowered to trade your life for a lie….Mr. Proctor, a score of people have already testified they saw this woman with the Devil. 
• It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it . . ..it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.
• I would to God it were not so, Excellency, but these people have great weight yet in the town.
• Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast doubt upon the guilt of them that died till now. While I speak God’s law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering.
• 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 any more.
• My name is good in the village! I will not have it said my name is soiled! Goody Proctor is a gossiping liar!
• I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another…I have no tongue for it. 
• Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life.
• 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. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!
• You are not undone! Let you take hold here. Wait for no one to charge you – declare it yourself. 
• Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now…And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow!
• I’ll plead no more! I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!
• A man may think God sleeps, but God sees everything, I know it now. I beg you, sir, I beg you—see her what she is . . . She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s vengeance.
• He knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what I sign to is not the same!
• You will not use me! I am no Sarah Good or Tituba, I am John Proctor! You will not use me! It is no part of salvation that you should use me!
• Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.
• Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. “More weight,” he says. And died.
• HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit...Here are all your familiar spirits – your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea
• John – tell me, are we lost?
• Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!
• Do you take it upon yourself to determine what this court shall believe and what it shall set aside? . . . .This is the highest court of the supreme government of this province, do you know it?
• I came into this village like a bridegroom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up.
• You will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to your death, Tituba!
• What work you do! It’s strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!
• Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers?
• There is fear in the country because there is a moving plot to topple Christ in the country!
• You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.
• Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims – and they do testify, the children certainly do testify.
• HALE, to Parris, trying to contain himself: Is every defense an attack upon the court? Can no one—?
• Excellency, it is a natural lie to tell; I beg you, stop now before another is condemned! I may shut my conscience to it no more