Proctor's Important Quotes

Act one:

1.“Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut of my hand before I ever reach for you again. Wipe it out of mind. We never touched, Abby.”

2.“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 anymore.”

Act two:

3.“I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girls a saint now, I think it not easy to prove she’s a fraud, and the town gone so silly.”

4.“No more! I should have roared you down when you first told me your suspicions. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God that day. But you’re not, you’re not, and let you remember it! Let you look sometimes for the good in me, and judge me not.”

5.“And why not, if they must hang for denyin’ it? There are them that will swear to anything before they’ll hang; have you never thought of that?”

6.“I will fall like an ocean on that court! Fear nothing, Elizabeth.”

7.“I’ll tell you what’s walkin Salem- vengeance is walkin Salem, but now the crazy little children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law.”

Act three:

8.“They’re pretending!”

9.“How do you call upon Heaven? Whore! Whore!”

10.“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! For them that Quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud- God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!

11.“You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore.”


Act four:

12.“I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. I am not that man. My honesty is broke, Elizabeth; I am no good man. Nothing’s spoiled by giving them this lie that were not rotten long before.”

13.“Spite only keeps me silent. It is hard to give a lie to dogs.”


14.“How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

15.“You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see a shred of good in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.”