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.
Charlotte Bartlett: I shall never forgive myself.
Lucy Honeychurch: You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself.
Charlotte Bartlett: In my small way I am a woman of the world. And I know where things can lead to.
Lucy Honeychurch: Mother doesn't like me playing Beethoven. She says I'm always peevish afterwards.
Reverend Beebe: Naturally one would be... stirred up.
Cecil Vyse: You must forgive me if I say stupid things. My brain has gone to pieces.
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.
Cecil Vyse: What is it about Italy that makes lady novelists reach such summits of absurdity?
Lucy Honeychurch: Mother is calling, I have got to go. They trust me.
Mr. Emerson: Why should they, when you deceived everyone, including yourself?
Eleanor Lavish: A young girl, transfigured by Italy! And why shouldn't she be transfigured? It happened to the Goths.
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.
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: We all have our little foibles, and mine is the prompt settling of accounts.
Eleanor Lavish: Smell! A true Florentine smell. Inhale, my dear. Deeper! Every city, let me tell you, has its own smell.
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.
New Lucy: Don't you agree that, on one's first visit to Florence, one must have a room with a view?
Cecil Vyse: Temper, Lucy. Temper, please.
Answer: He was owed 15 shillings and a pound (in those days) was 20 shillings. Since he was owed most of a pound, he thought, "just give me the pound and call it even." He wasn't going to give change.
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