Death Takes a Holiday (1934)

Fredric March: Prince Sirki

Photos 

Quotes 

• Prince Sirki : I wish that we may never meet when you are less beautiful, and I must be less kind.

• Grazia : Who are you?

  Prince Sirki : Sirki.

  Grazia : I don't mean that. You seem to come from a distant place. When I'm with you, I see depths in your eyes that are like the worlds I visit in sleep. And beneath your words is a sound I've heard in dreams. When you leave me, the light goes from the sky. You're like the mystery that's just beyond sight and sound. Always just beyond my reach. Something that draws and... frightens me.

• Death : I bound myself to life, and with it, to the little rules by which it is lived. And now I must bow to it. What a monstrous comedy!

• Death : Can you conceive how lonely I am - when there is nothing that doesn't shrink from me?

• Prince Sirki : Do not worry, my friend. Your sacred privilege of blowing each other to bits is still safe.

• Death : My holiday is just caprice - a mad joke that I play on life. But what a monstrous, what a sublime joke! I, Death, do hereby take on the World, the Flesh, and the Devil!

• Death : There is something about me that men fear and that makes them cling to their existence. I must find out what it is.

• Death : Love is greater than illusion, and as strong as death!

• Baron Cesarea : [hearing that someone has just narrowly escaped death]  Well, it just wasn't time for the Old Man to take him.

  Prince Sirki : [offended]  I beg your pardon! The Old Man?

  Prince Sirki : [realizing the humor in the remark]  Ah yes... the Old Man!

• Prince Sirki : Now suddenly I know for the first time that men bear a dream within them, a dream that lifts them above their dust... and their little days.

• Duke Lambert : Why do you do this?

  Death : For a number of reasons. For one thing, to discover why men fear me as they do.

  Duke Lambert : Don't you know?

  Death : How should I know? What could terror mean to me, who have nothing to fear?

• Death : I am - how shall I pursue it - a sort of vagabond of space. I am the point of contact between eternity and time.

• Prince Sirki : Perhaps you can tell me what I have been doing.

  Grazia : I think I can, almost.

  Prince Sirki : Tell me.

  Grazia : I think you've been holding life in your hands, as I do some times. I think you've been a little afraid of its beauty.

  Prince Sirki : Oh, you do know.

• Death : I shall feel blood flowing in my veins, the warm blood of life. I shall know what you know, feel what you feel! My hunger shall be appeased for an hour... my hunger that is as old as time - and those I love can feel they are not afraid... not afraid... NOT AFRAID!

• Prince Sirki : Grazia - my little love - it was NOT a jest!