Dangerous Beauty Movie Quotes
Veronica Franco
I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one... I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience... I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess - I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips, his hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... . Such surrender has been mine. I confess I hunger still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, always, this is mine... If this had not been mine - if I had lived any other way - a child to her husband's whim, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love. I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out... You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give but cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift: our selves, our yearning, our need to love - you call it filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.
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Beatrice Venier
Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her today? "In a girl's voice lies temptation - a known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body." She doesn't believe it yet, but she will. She'll grow up just like her mother. Marry, raise children and honor her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl. And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country for no biblical hell could ever be worse than a state of perpetual inconsequence.
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Giulia De Lezze
Go on, ask her. Ask her what you're longing to. Ask her what draws our husbands back to her - again and again - like pigs to a trough!
[swallows the banana whole, as the wives look on shocked]
Veronica Franco
A woman's greatest, and most hard-won asset - is an education.
Giulia De Lezze
Just because you can say it in Latin doesn't make it any less obscene.
Veronica Franco
Just because you took a vow doesn't mean you know how to love.
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Veronica Franco
Why, Marco Venier, I do believe you're jealous.
Marco Venier
One could only be jealous of what one cannot have.
Veronica Franco
And you cannot have me.
Marco Venier
There's not a woman in Venice I can't have.
Veronica Franco
And there's not a man in Venice that I can't have.
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Veronica Franco
You... all of you... you who hunger so for what I give, but cannot bear to see such power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift... ourselves, our yearning, our need to love... you call it filth and sin and heresy.
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Marco Venier
You must save yourself.
Veronica Franco
How?
Marco Venier
Confess... whatever foolishness they put before you...
Veronica Franco
That I am a witch?
Marco Venier
What does it matter what you say to these hypocrites?
Veronica Franco
I would be saying it.
Marco Venier
There is no honor with fools like these. God will forgive you.
Veronica Franco
Marco, if I give them my lie, I give them my soul. I'll lose everything I ever was. My love, my words, my heart.
Marco Venier
Yes, but you would live.
Veronica Franco
As someone else.
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Veronica Franco
Amazing.
Paola Franco
Use your fingers lightly, like feathers. Then harder. Your tongue, like licking sweets. Your teeth with restraint. Just enough - to keep him wanting more. It's wanting - that keeps us alive.
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Domenico Venier
If I didn't know you better I'd think you have the feigned indifference of a man in love. Go on son. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
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Paola Franco
Desire begins in the mind.
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Maffio Venier
Personally, I didn't think Uncle was still capable of getting it up. What did you do to him to get him to publish this little of ditties.
Marco Venier
She worked for it.
Maffio Venier
Ha, I bet she did. How much do you cost these days Veronica?
Veronica Franco
If your prick is as limp as your verse, no price can buy time enough.
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Paola Franco
Courtesans, my dear, are the most educated women in the world.
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Maffio Venier
You compel sacred love to garner riches. What is this if not witchcraft?
Veronica Franco
No!
Maffio Venier
No? Did you ever give yourself to a man who could not pay your fee?
Veronica Franco
I gave my heart where riches were no use.
Maffio Venier
Answer the question!
Veronica Franco
I did what was necessary to live!
Maffio Venier
Did you ever give yourself to a man who could not pay your fee?
Veronica Franco
What other profession will you allow me? How shall I survive if I cannot marry?
Bolognetti
You will answer the question!
Veronica Franco
Why, when you are determined to damn me whatever. I say?
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Bolognetti
I leave this woman to Venice, which richly deserves her.
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Marco Venier
What God and greed have joined together, let no love put asunder.
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Maffio Venier
May sing, and rhyme, and more. Still, is at best a slut, With every horny mutt! You pride yourself on arts and letters, and fucking best your manly betters!
Veronica Franco
I save the goodly wives of Venice from their husbands' lustful menace!
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Veronica Franco
I think you mistake me for one of your easy court companions?
Marco Venier
No, no I mistook the asking in your eyes.
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Marco Venier
Do you not like my kiss?
Veronica Franco
I wish it were not a sin to have liked it so.
Marco Venier
God made sin, though we might know his mercy.
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Paola Franco
A courtesan is a force of nature in a civilized cloak. Any chambermaid can flop down, take off her shirt, and men will come. Your true power comes from something much - deeper than beauty. Cleopatra knew that. Theodosia. Aspasia. She could seduce a man at 20 paces without revealing an inch of flesh.
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Veronica Franco
You sleep with Giulia every night for duty's sake. I slept with the King of France once for duty's sake. Who does not forgive?
Marco Venier
Perhaps I just can't live with it.
Veronica Franco
But I love you.
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Veronica Franco
What do you yearn for, King Henry?
Veronica Franco
Yes, sire.
King Henry
The king's a pervert.
Veronica Franco
What do you really yearn for, King Henry?
King Henry
Tears.
Veronica Franco
Tears for whom?
King Henry
Your tears.
Veronica Franco
You yearn for my tears? I don't think so.
King Henry
Then what do I yearn for?
Veronica Franco
[She takes the dagger from him slowly, then points it at his neck]
Why don't we find out?
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Veronica Franco
If I were yours alone, your property, chaste and silent, you would soon tire of me.
Marco Venier
You're wrong!
Veronica Franco
Am I?
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Zealot
Citizens of Venice! Look around you now at the disease and deaths that have taken over our once beautiful city, and tell me this plague is not a punishment from God! We are surrounded by harlots and courtesans! We must cast out those who tempt us for we are a city of shame of fornication and carnal practices that defy description. We will go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah and become dust in the sands of time!
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Paola Franco
First secret of all great courtesans: You must know pleasure, to give pleasure.
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Paola Franco
In order to choose your lovers wisely, you need to understand men. No matter their shape or size, position, or wealth, they all dream of the temptress. The irresistible, unapproachable Venus, who quickly turns pliable maiden when they've had a hard day.
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Veronica Franco
Recant the curse you give my kind. Admit I have, as you, a heart and mind.
Maffio Venier
A greedy hand, an empty heart is all that wrests your legs apart.
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Beatrice Venier
When my daughter is old enough, I want you to make her a courtesan.
Veronica Franco
I will not pimp your daughter.
Beatrice Venier
Look at the life you live! The freedom that you have. Will you deny my daughter the same chance?
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Marco Venier
I'm getting married Veronica. Congratulate me.
Veronica Franco
Felicitations on your grand match.
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Veronica Franco
My people are true citizens 700 years back.
Marco Venier
A coat of arms does not an inheritance make.
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Veronica Franco
I confess I *fuck* divinely those who love and well opine me.
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Veronica Franco
Do not ask of me what you cannot give yourself. Your wife is waiting.
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Maffio Venier
For what did they pay you?
Veronica Franco
For the dream of love - as it cannot exist in this world that you've created.
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Veronica Franco
My cage seems bigger than yours, but it's still a cage.
Beatrice Venier
If you want sympathy from me, you won't get it.
Veronica Franco
I don't want your sympathy.
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Maffio Venier
Paradise? When 56,000 have fallen? You say this. You! Who fill your home with feasting and dancing while Venice suffers? Who creates a sumptuous world of *flesh* and depravity, of orgiastic rites invoking the devil? This is your paradise?
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Maffio Venier
Tell us, how many of the worthy men of this city have you taken into your chamber?
Veronica Franco
I have not counted my lovers.
Maffio Venier
More than 20?
Bolognetti
You will answer the question.
Veronica Franco
Yes.
Maffio Venier
More than 100?
Veronica Franco
I don't know.
Maffio Venier
You cannot remember them? Yet for each you paraded your milky breast and hair of spun copper. For each you learned his unique favored touch and enchanted him to believe he was the only man in the universe. What was the average number in a single week?
Veronica Franco
I told you. I enchanted no one.
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Veronica Franco
How do people marry, Mother?
Paola Franco
They strike a bargain.
Veronica Franco
What's to bargain over if you're in love?
Paola Franco
Marriage is a contract, not a perpetual tryst.
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Maffio Venier
Oh! Oh, Olivia. Oh, glorious maid, Of virtue spare, With bosoms like those, Who could care?
Marco Venier
My rod, my lady, a hand.
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Elena Franco
Ladies have better things to do than poison their minds with books.
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Veronica Franco
Recant the curse you give my kind, Admit I have, as you, a heart and mind.
Maffio Venier
A greedy hand, an empty heart, Is all that wrests your legs apart.
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[first lines]
Veronica Franco
We danced our youth in a dreamed-of city. Venice. Paradise. Proud and pretty We lived for love and lust and beauty. Pleasure then our only duty. Floating then 'twixt heaven and earth. And drunk on plenty's blessed mirth. We thought ourselves eternal then. Our glory sealed by God's own pen. But paradise we found is always frail. Against man's fear will always fail.
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Paola Franco
It's a treacherous game you play, my little idiot. You outdid me long ago. I know that. And the irony is, it's not because - you're prettier than I was, because you're not. Nor that you're a better lay than I was, because you're not. It's because you are smarter than I am. You have a gift. Don't throw it away!
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Paola Franco
Daughter, you have reached too high. I told you, marriage is a contract. Two countries signing a treaty. To a man of Marco's station, it has nothing to do with love. But, you can still have Marco. But not in wedlock. There's an alternative to marriage. You'll become a courtesan - like your mother used to be.
Veronica Franco
You were a courtesan?
Paola Franco
One of the best.
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Maffio Venier
Venice may as well be deemed one large floating brothel.
Marco Venier
What's biting your ass this fair evening, cousin?
Maffio Venier
Um. Poverty. Always puts me in a bad mood.
Marco Venier
Can you begrudge the fairer sex their little crumbs?
Maffio Venier
No, though they do make more in a night than I a month. The lovely whores.
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Paola Franco
Come. You can't be squeamish. If you don't enjoy it, they'll smell it, like a dog smells fear. And they'll hate you for it.
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Paola Franco
Remember, Veronica, love love. But do not love the man, or you'll be in his power.
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Marco Venier
Scrape any lower you can have shoes for earrings.
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Maffio Venier
Must be interesting being in a room full of men, most of whom you've seen with their pants down.
Veronica Franco
Puts it all in some kind of perspective.
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Veronica Franco
Venice, mother, virgin, queen, and goddess, To be all five at once is no mean trick, If women's lust lost Eden, Our redress to be, Hearth, heart and home to every - prick.
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Marco Venier
You confuse indifference with honesty.
Veronica Franco
You confuse honesty with venality.
Marco Venier
You think me venal?
Veronica Franco
You are a venal cur.
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Marco Venier
Do you like poetry?
Giulia De Lezze
I know the Psalms.
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Bolognetti
Is everything I heard about this city true?
The Doge
Surely the Holy Inquisition need not sully its hands with a common whore. This is a matter for the state, don't you think?
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Marco Venier
We are a strange city, Your Holiness. Perhaps accursed. And perhaps we live in a peculiar state of grace.
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Paola Franco
He's a client like all the others. Love him and you lose!
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Veronica Franco
Mother, we can't go in there.
Paola Franco
Ladies can't go in there. Courtesans can.
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Marco Venier
I think I've missed you.
Veronica Franco
With all the court ladies to amuse you?
Marco Venier
Roman women, they can't hold a candle to the Venetian. Nor can French, nor can Florentine, nor can any woman from Europe to the Levant.
Veronica Franco
No doubt you've sampled them all.
Marco Venier
All but idle amusement until you blossomed.
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Marco Venier
Save your blushes, Veronica. They don't sit well with the bluntness of your tongue.
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Veronica Franco
How could they?
Marco Venier
How could who what?
Veronica Franco
Your parents marry your sister off to that piece of decaying flesh.
Marco Venier
That piece of decaying flesh is a cousin of the doge, confidant of the pope. The Roman court adores him.
Veronica Franco
The Roman court doesn't have to sleep with him.
Marco Venier
Oh, you'd be surprised.
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Marco Venier
I bought this in Rome for you.
Veronica Franco
You didn't buy it for me.
Marco Venier
Yes, I did. I just didn't know it.
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Pietro Venier
[escorting his daughter and her new husband to the bridal chamber]
Do honor to the houses of Gritti and Venier. For Venice.
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Marco Venier
I think perhaps you're too young - to accept what I would - truly give you.
Veronica Franco
I am not so young as you are vain.
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Paola Franco
Beauty is a manifestation of the divine. That theory built the Sistine Chapel and it'll do the same for you.
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Marco Venier
Marriage isn't romantic. That's why God invented poetry.
Veronica Franco
To sweeten men's lying lips!
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Marco Venier
Did you enjoy the hunt?
Veronica Franco
Well, the hunt possesses, doesn't it, such a cruel beauty?
Marco Venier
Much like your own.
Veronica Franco
Is my beauty cruel?
Marco Venier
Oh, I think so. To those that you refuse, yes.
Veronica Franco
It is only my refusal that arouses your longing.
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Veronica Franco
On the page or on the sheet, You'll never find a tongue more sweet.
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