The Razor's Edge (1946)

Clifton Webb: Elliott Templeton

Photos 

Quotes 

• Louisa Bradley : Elliott, who is this man you invited to dinner tonight?

  Elliott Templeton : He's an English author.

  [Referring to W. Somerset Maugham] 

  Elliott Templeton : He's quite alright. In fact he's quite famous. So pretend you've heard of him even if you haven't.

• Elliott Templeton : The enjoyment of art is the only remaining ecstasy that's neither immoral nor illegal.

• Elliott Templeton : I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi.

• Elliott Templeton : I'm afraid I haven't a very good account to give you of that young man, Louisa.

  Louisa Bradley : Oh?

  Elliott Templeton : When he first came over to Paris, for Isabel's sake, I asked him to lunch to meet the sort of people he ought to know. He told me he didn't eat lunch.

  Louisa Bradley : Perhaps he doesn't.

  Elliott Templeton : And then, when I asked him to dinner, he said he couldn't come because he had no evening clothes. If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand how any young man could come to Paris without evening clothes.

  Louisa Bradley : Maybe he just didn't want to.

  Elliott Templeton : That's the most incredible reason for refusing an invitation I've ever heard in my life.

• W. Somerset Maugham : [about Elliott's monogrammed robe]  Elliott, what the devil's that crown doing over your initials?

  Elliott Templeton : His Holiness has been graciously pleased to revive, in my favor, my old family title.

  W. Somerset Maugham : Your what?

  Elliott Templeton : Oh, didn't you know? I'm descended, in the female line, from the Count de Lauria, who came over to England with Philip II to marry the maid of honor to Queen Mary. As an American citizen, I feel it more modest not to use my title except on all my personal linen.

• Isabel Bradley : You think you're very clever.

  Elliott Templeton : I don't think it. I know it.

• Elliott Templeton : Though you've lived half your life in diplomatic society and half the capitals of the world, you remain hopelessly American.

• Elliott Templeton : You know, I've never been able to understand why, when there's so much space in the world, people should deliberately choose to live in the Middle West.

• Elliott Templeton : I admit, he is good looking, and his clothes fit.

• W. Somerset Maugham : I'm afraid you'll find the company mixed.

  Elliott Templeton : Don't you believe it. There'll be none of this confounded democracy there

  [in heaven] 

  Elliott Templeton : .

• Isabel Bradley : You can be wonderfully disagreeable when you like, Uncle Elliott.

  Elliott Templeton : I know, it's one of my most cherished gifts.

• Elliott Templeton : [Recounting a series of rejected invitations]  And then when I asked him to dinner, he said he couldn't come because he had no evening clothes. If I live to be a hundred I shall never understand how any young man can come to Paris without evening clothes.

  Louisa Bradley : [Referring to the turning down of the invitations]  Maybe he just didn't want to.

  Elliott Templeton : That's the most incredible reason for refusing an invitation I've ever heard in my life.

• Elliott Templeton : Am I right in surmising that you thought that if you could get him to come back here, it was almost inevitable that the inevitable should happen?

  Isabel Bradley : No one could put it more, delicately.

  Elliott Templeton : We know what the consequences may be when a poor girl strays from the narrow path of virtue.