This Happy Breed (1944)

John Blythe: Reg

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Quotes 

• Frank Gibbons : Marriage is a bit different, you know, from just having a bit of fun.

  Reg : Yes, I expect it is.

  Frank Gibbons : Women aren't all the same, you know, not by any manner of means. Some of them don't care what happens so long as they have a good time. Marriage isn't important to them - beyond having the ring and being Mrs. Whatever-it-is. But your mother wasn't that sort and I don't think Phyllis is either. She's a nice girl and she loves you a lot.

  Reg : I know, Dad.

  Frank Gibbons : And when a woman loves a man that much she's, uh, apt to be a bit oversensitive, you know. It's well to remember that.

  Reg : I'll remember that, Dad.

  Frank Gibbons : Just you go carefully. Be gentle. You got a long time together - all your lives, I hope, and it's worthwhile to go easy and get to know each other gradual.

• Sam Leadbitter : But as you well know there are millions and millions of 'omes in this country today where Christmas is naught but a mockery, where there's neither warmth nor food nor even the bare necessities of life, where little children, old before their time, huddle round a fireless grate.

  Queenie : Well, they'd be just as well off if they stayed in the middle of the room then, wouldn't they?

  Reg : Oh shut up Queenie, Sam's quite right.

  Sam Leadbitter : That sort of remark, Queenie, springs from complacency, arrogance and a full stomach.

  Queenie : You leave my stomach out of it.

  Sam Leadbitter : It is people like you, apathetic, unthinking, docile supporters of a capitalistic system which is a disgrace to civilization who are responsible for at least three quarters of the cruelest sufferings of the world. As long as you can earn your miserable little salaries and go to the pictures and enjoy yourselves, the rest of society can go hang, can't it. You're too busy getting all weepy over Rudolph Valentino to spare any tears for the workers of the world!

  Vi : Don't get excited, Sam. Queenie didn't mean it.

  Sam Leadbitter : I am not excited, and Queenie doesn't mean anything to me anyway.

  Queenie : Oh, pardon me all while I go and commit suicide.

• Frank Gibbons : Well son...

  Reg : Well Dad?

  Frank Gibbons : I suppose I ought to be giving you a few bits of fatherly advice by rights...

  Reg : What about Dad?

  Frank Gibbons : Well, there's the "facts of life" for instance...

  Reg : I could probably tell you a few things about them.

  Frank Gibbons : Yeah, I'll bet you could at that.

• Frank Gibbons : Well, uh, would you say, taken by and large that you've been a good boy on the whole since you've grown up?

  Reg : Depends on what you mean by good.

• Billy Mitchell : All ready for the ball and chain?

  Reg : You're too ruddy cheerful by half.

  Billy Mitchell : Well, of course I am. I'm a sailor, aren't I? All sailors are bright and breezy, you know? It's in the regulations.