How Green Was My Valley Quotes

Quotes from How Green Was my Valley

In order as they appear in the film

"I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And I'm going from my valley. And this time I shall never return. I am leaving behind me 50 years of memory. Memory. Streams that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago -- of men and women long since dead. Yet who shall say what is real and what is not? Can I believe my friends all gone when their voices are a glory in my ears? No. And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain a living truth within my mind. There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can close my eyes on my valley as it is today, and it is gone, and I see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the plenty of the Earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful. Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday. In those days, the black slag -- the waste of the coal pits -- had only begun to cover the sides of our hill, not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers through the green. I can hear, even now, the voice of my sister Angharad."

- narration of opening sequence by Irving Pichel, playing Huw Morgan as an adult

"Someone would strike up a song, and the valley would ring with the sound of many voices -- for singing is in my people as sight is in the eye."

- narration by Irving Pichel, playing Huw Morgan as an adult

"My mother was always on the run -- always the last to start her dinner and the first to finish. For, if my father was the head of our house, my mother was its heart."

- narration by Irving Pichel, playing Huw Morgan as an adult

"You will not make me a plank for your politics. I will not be the excuse for any strike."

- Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp)

"We are not questioning your authority, sir, but if manners prevent our speaking the truth, we will be without manners."

- Ianto Morgan (John Loder)

"I have come up here to tell you what I think of you all, because you are talking against my husband. You are a lot of cowards to go against him. He has done nothing against you and he never has and you know it well. How some of you, you smug-faced hypocrites, can sit in the same chapel with him I cannot tell. To say he is with the owners is not only nonsense but downright wickedness. There's one thing more I've got to say and it is this. If harm comes to my Gwilym, I will find out the men and I will kill them with my two hands. And this I will swear by God Almighty."

- Beth Morgan (Sara Allgood)

"It is with me now, so many years later. And it makes me think of so much that is good, that is gone."

- narration by Irving Pichel, playing Huw Morgan as an adult

"But remember, with strength goes responsibility -- to others and to yourselves. For you cannot conquer injustice with more injustice -- only with justice and the help of God."

- Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon)

"Look now, you are king in the chapel. But I will be queen in my own kitchen."

"You will be queen wherever you walk."

"What does that mean?"

"I should not have said it....I have no right to speak to you so."

"Mr. Gruffydd, if the right is mine to give, you have it."

- Angharad Morgan (Maureen O'Hara) and Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon)

"I will never leave you, Mama."

"Huw boy, if you should never leave me, I'll be sorry I ever had babies."

"Why did you have them?"

"To keep my hands in water and my face to the fire, perhaps."

- young Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall) and Beth Morgan (Sarah Allgood)

"You've been lucky, Huw. Lucky to suffer and lucky to spend these weary months in bed. For so God has given you a chance to make the spirit within yourself. And as your father cleans his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit... By prayer, Huw. And by prayer, I don't mean shouting, mumbling, and wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think. Think well what you're saying. Make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that way, your prayer will have strength, and that strength will become a part of you, body, mind, and spirit. The first duty of these new legs is to get you to chapel on Sunday."

- Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), to Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall)

"How could you stand there and watch them? Cruel old men, groaning and nodding to hurt her more. That is not the Word of God! 'Go now and sin no more,' Jesus said."

"Angharad! You know your Bible too well, and life too little."

"I know enough of life to know that Meillyn Lewis is no worse than I am!...What do the deacons know about it? What do you know about what could happen to a poor girl when she loves a man so much that even to lose sight of him for a moment is torture!"

- Angharad Morgan (Maureen O’Hara) to Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon)

"And how would you measure a man who would use a stick on a boy one-third his size? Now, you are good in the use of a stick, but boxing is my subject, according to the rules laid down by the good Marquess of Queensberry...And happy I am to pass on my knowledge to you."

- Dai Bando (Rhys Williams) to Mr. Jonas (Morton Lowery)

"Nothing is enough for people who have minds like cesspools. Oh, Huw, my little one, I hope when you're grown their tongues will be slower to hurt."

- Beth Morgan (Sarah Allgood)

"Huw, I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ever dreamed of, not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind. With truth. With the golden sound of the Word. But only a few of them heard. Only a few of you understood."

- Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon)

"He came to me just now. Ivor was with him. He spoke to me and told me of the glory he had seen."

- Beth Morgan (Sarah Allgood), on death of Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp)

"Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then."

- narration by Irving Pichel, playing Huw Morgan as an adult