Cleopatra (1963)

Richard Burton: Mark Antony

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Cleopatra : You come before me as a suppliant.

  Antony : If you choose to regard me as such.

  Cleopatra : I do. You will therefore assume the position of a suppliant before this throne. You will kneel.

  Antony : I will *what*?

  Cleopatra : On-your-knees!

  Antony : You dare ask the Proconsul of the Roman Empire?

  Cleopatra : I *asked* it of Julius Caesar. I *demand* it of you!

• Antony : Queens. Queens. Strip them naked as any other woman, they are no longer queens.

  Rufio : It is also difficult to tell the rank of a naked general. Generals without armies are naked indeed.

• Marc Antony : [his last words]  A kiss... to take my breath away...

• Cleopatra : [admiring his armor]  And I find what you're wearing most becoming. Greek, isn't it?

  Antony : I have a fondness for almost all Greek things.

  Cleopatra : [referring to her Macedonian ancestry]  As an almost all-Greek thing, I'm flattered.

• Marc Antony : Your tongue is old, but sharp, Cicero. Be careful how you waggle it. One day it will cut off your head.

• Antony : What has angered you? That I dealt with Octavian however I could, or that I married his sister to do it? Jealousy or politics, which?

  Cleopatra : Both! And damn you for not understanding either!

  Antony : It would not occur to me to look to you for instruction.

  Cleopatra : Which is why you have come back chained to Octavian like a slave. And with such an exquisite set of chains. So softly spoken, so virtuous! She sleeps, I hear, fully-clothed!

• Marc Antony : Why are you not dead? Why do you live? How do you live? Why do you not lie at the deepest hole of the sea, bloodless, and bloated, and at peace with honorable death?

• Marc Antony : This son of Caesar, does it upset you?

  Caesar Augustus : No.

  Marc Antony : You were so shut at the mouth just now one would think your words were are precious to you as your gold.

  Caesar Augustus : Like my gold, I used them where they are worth most.

  Marc Antony : Ah! And your virtue?

  [Leans over to him] 

  Marc Antony : My friend has a friend.

  Caesar Augustus : That too.

• [to Octavian] 

  Antony : You know it's possible Octavian that when you die... You will die without ever having been alive.

• Rufio : We must find the gold to pay them, the wheat to feed them, supplies, ships, armor.

  Antony : Where do you suggest we look for all these?

  Rufio : I thought perhaps further to the east.

  Antony : Syria.

  Rufio : Perhaps more to the south.

  Antony : Ethiopia.

  Rufio : To the north of Ethiopia.

  Antony : I forbid you to mention it!

  Rufio : I didn't.

  Antony : I will not crawl to her, hand held out like a beggar. Why has she not offered her assistance.

• [as they begin eating on Cleopatra's barge] 

  Marc Antony : Fabulous feast.

  Cleopatra : One is so limited when one travels by ship.

• Antony : Show me a city and I'll tell you how to take it. Let me face an army, I'll smell out it's weak points and hit them hard where they are. Make me to sit down, talk in whispers of this and that with an emphasis here and a shrug there, and I'm soon confounded and defeated.

• Marc Antony : There's not enough gold in Egypt to buy the honor of a Roman senator.

  Julius Caesar : More than enough, it seems, to buy his vote.

• Marc Antony : My lords Octavian and Agrippa have all the strategic brilliance... of two vestal virgins.