Arthur Miller Quotes

I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Abigail expresses her deep and obsessive love for Proctor and her hatred of Salem and the "lying lessons" she was taught by the Puritans. The metaphor "took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart" refers to Abigail’s sexual awakening with the married Proctor and her discovery of the hypocricy of Salem culture. Desperate to rekindle their affair, she pleads with her reluctant ex-lover to not "tear the light out of my eyes." That "light" is a metaphor for the love and lust they shared.

I think she’ll wake in time. Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she’ll wake when she tires of it. A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Rebecca Nurse reassures Thomas Putnam about his daughter Ruth, when he asks Rebecca to go and see if she can wake the child. The sensible, saintly and experienced mother and grandmother is the voice of calm amid the growing hysteria in Salem. The respected 72-year-old is not buying the talk of witches and the Devil’s work. She believes that Ruth and Betty Parris are just acting silly and faking illness, and will snap out of it when they tire of their mischief.

Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits – your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now – we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Reverend John Hale, newly arrived to Salem and armed with his stack of books, vows to win the battle of good and evil with the Devil. He excudes great confidence in his knowledge of Satan and witchcraft and is convinced that he will be able to find any witches hiding among the Salem population. His assurances are all a bit intellectual and based on book knowledge rather than real life experience. As time goes by and he observes the bias and unfairness of a justice system that doesn’t follow due process, that early confidence in finding the truth fades.

But 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. I hope you be one of those.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Danforth, in this courtroom speech to Francis Nurse, comes across as rigid, authoritarian, intolerant and a symbol of the absolute nature of Salem’s justice. He uses the metaphor of "no road between" to emphasize that you are either for the court or counted against it. Driven by an extreme ideology, he views the court and himself as being on the right side of the war between good and evil. They are essentially doing God’s work. In an extended metaphor he compares himself to the shining sun come to light up the dusky afternoon when evil was indistinguishable from good and confused the world. Danforth is self-deluded into believing that he is doing God’s will condemning and hanging innocent people. The irony is that the court is not being guided by God’s grace in a fight against evil. It is the corrupt court judges in collaboration with the lying Abigail and her troop of girls that are the true evil in Salem. Intoxicated by his own power, Danforth fails to see any of this.

DANFORTH: Will you confess yourself befouled with Hell, or do you keep that black allegiance yet? What say you?
PROCTOR: I say – I say – God is dead!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Danforth attempts to coerce John Proctor into confessing that he is working with the Devil, and John makes the shocking reply that God is dead. This is a reference to the statement of controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. But Proctor is not speaking in the literal sense. He is being sarcastic and ironic. He means that God isn’t in charge in Salem anymore and evil has taken over and the Devil reigns. John has lost faith in the Putitans’ God and their version of justice and morality. He is expressing his disgust at the corruption of the court and the so-called men of God who practice injustice, dishonesty and unfairness.

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!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Proctor’s rageful final speech to Danforth as he is being arrested at the end of Act 3 uses powerful fire and Devil metaphors for the injustices happening in Salem. Wickedness, ignorance and the inaction of people who stand idly are burning down truth and justice in Salem, leaving a community in ruins. In speaking about Salem’s "filthy face," he is referring to those people who value pride and reputation above integrity and fail to do the right thing. The imagery symbolizes also the hellfire reserved for those who have sinned, including Danforth and Proctor himself. Proctor is telling Danforth that Lucifer is indeed at work in Salem. However, it is not the people accused of witchcraft who are carrying out the Devil’s work, but the corrupt court itself. Using a metaphor, Proctor damns Danforth and the judges for their "black hearts" in killing innocent people while knowing the accusations against them are lies. Proctor admits that he also is bound for hell for his wrongdoing, including failure to expose sooner the manipulations of his former mistress Abby. This passage is one of Miller’s most ferocious denunciations of the Salem authorities who jailed and executed innocent people, and the townspeople who stood by and did nothing to stop this.

You are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Proctor roars this at Danforth, accusing the court of going against the will of God and handing control of the trials to a whore like Abigail. He is saying that the discredited court has no moral legitimacy. One of the most powerful quotes in the play, it speaks to Abby’s power. But it also shows John’s honesty and courage in standing up to a corrupt legal and religious establishment, even at the cost of his life.

HERRICK: It’s the proper morning to fly into Hell.
TITUBA: Oh, it be no Hell in Barbados. Devil, him be pleasure-man in Barbados, him be singin’ and dancin’ in Barbados. It’s you folks – you riles him up ’round here; it be too cold ’round here for that Old Boy. He freeze his soul in Massachusetts, but in Barbados he just and sweet and – (A bellowing cow is heard, and Tituba leaps up and calls to the window): Aye, sir! That’s him, Sarah!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. The "nearly drunk" Marshal Herrick is speaking to Tituba and Sarah Good, who are in prison waiting to be hanged. The women are losing their sanity, thinking that the Devil is coming to take them to Barbados.

I come to do the Devil’s work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. When Danforth asks Hale why he has returned to the court, he makes this sarcastic reply to the supervising judge. Using verbal irony, the clergyman says that he is doing the Devil’s work asking people to lie and confess to witchcraft to save their lives. The blood on Hale’s head is a metaphor for his feelings of guilt over the court condemning and hanging innocent people with his help. Now more outspoken and less respectful to the court, Hale is not the same enthusiastic witch-hunter who arrived to Salem with complete confidence in the justice system.
He is now more concerned with preserving life than with collaborating with the court to kill "witches." We see the strength of Hale’s moral integrity here.

HALE: Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman, prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God’s judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride. Will you plead with him? I cannot think he will listen to another.
ELIZABETH: I think that be the Devil’s argument.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. Reverend John Hale has undergone a profound transformation from saving souls from witchery to saving lives. Once a staunch believer in Salem’s court justice, he is no longer. It is ironic for an ordained miniser of the church to ask that upright people lie to the court. But his priority now is the preservation of life. He wants Elizabeth to save her husband’s by getting him to put aside his pride and falsely confess to witchcraft. In the eyes of God it is a greater sin to die because of pride than telling a lie in order to live, Hale argues. He is challenging the rigid good vs evil, God vs Devil belief system of Puritanism as it applies to witchcraft. No longer are the divisions between what is right and what is wrong as clear-cut for Hale. Elizabeth describes what he is saying as the "Devil’s argument."

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…It were a fearsome man, Giles Corey.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. The particularly gruesome and brutal death of Giles Corey is described here by Elizabeth. He was crushed to death by the piling of heavy stones and rocks on top of his chest. Giles was a man of great courage and moral integrity. He had been ordered by Judge Danforth to reveal the name of a man who overheard Thomas Putnam admit to falsely accusing people of witchcraft to get their land. Giles refused in order to protect the man and was tortured to death by Salem’s rough justice.

I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. After Proctor falsely confesses to binding himself to the Devil’s service, Danforth asks if he saw Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty and Martha Corey with the Devil. But Proctor refuses to name names and incriminate others. He can only speak of his own sins, he says, being guilty of the sin of adultery. Proctor cannot point the finger of blame at others, showing his integrity. Many witnesses who appeared before Senator McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities were also pressed into naming names and suffered greatly when they refused.

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. As John Proctor faces hanging on a trumped up charge of witchcraft, this proud man realizes that his reputation and integrity mean more to him than his life. Having been pressured to sign a false confession, he refuses Danforth’s demand to allow his confession be nailed to the church door for all to see. This refusal will lead to his execution. To confess to a lie in order to live would be to dishonor his fellow prisoners who go to their deaths for staying silent, he believes. In the new moments he will tear up his confession, signing his death warrant but with his integrity intact.

He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. Elizabeth speaks the play’s last lines about John as he is taken to be hanged, along with Rebecca Nurse and the other innocent Salem accused. She refuses Reverend Hale’s request to plead with her husband to lie and confess to witchcraft in order to be spared hanging. She recognizes that the innocent John prefers to die maintaining his integrity and honesty and she respects that. This quote tells us that she has forgiven John of any sin he has committed and loves him absolutely. Also, he has forgiven himself.
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