Belle (2013)

Tom Wilkinson: Lord Mansfield

Photos 

Quotes 

• John Davinier : M'lord! If you find for the traders, you will be formalizing in law the concept of insuring human cargo.

  Lord Mansfield : That's correct.

  [to carriage-handler] 

  Lord Mansfield : Drive.

  John Davinier : Then know that when you are gone, your legacy will be to have left Miss Lindsay in a world where she may be worth more dead than alive.

  Lord Mansfield : Miss Lindsay is not a slave.

  John Davinier : By the very grace of God!

  Lord Mansfield : [thumping on carriage's roof to signal driver to stop]  This is not about Miss Lindsay.

  John Davinier : Of course it is. It's about all of us. It's about everything... everything that's important.

  Lord Mansfield : [pause]  Mr Davinier, the world is a devastating place. You must learn to protect your emotions, if you wish to prevent matters both of law... and love, from devastating you.

• Lady Mansfield : Do you love her?

  Lord Mansfield : As though she were created by you and me.

• Lord Mansfield : Mr. Davinier, what is the purpose of the law in your eyes?

  John Davinier : To provide certainty where otherwise there might be none.

• [repeated line] 

  Lord Mansfield : Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

• Lord Mansfield : [confronting them]  This man's ambition includes you. You will endure shame and risk your position for a man without name, who will sully yours and drag your reputation into the gutter.

  John Davinier : I take great offense at your summation of my character without ever even taking a moment to know me. Where is your right?

  Lord Mansfield : Right? I have every right!

  John Davinier : That you will never have. Not until you cease from judging the entire world as those above and those below, and begin to see people as people. Human beings who think and feel no more or less than you do.

  Lord Mansfield : I know there is a lady in Belsize who is waiting to be your wife.

  John Davinier : No, I have an ambitious aunt in Belsize. Who, like you, assume that wealth and reputation are all that life depends on, and despises love as though it were the devil's own creation!

  Lord Mansfield : Love? You claim love?

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : No! Stop, Papa!

  John Davinier : YES! YES! l love her! I love her with every breath I breathe!

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : Go, John. You do not deserve this.

  John Davinier : [bounds out the door] 

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : Captain Sir John Lindsay would never have behaved like this.

  Lord Mansfield : Captain Sir John Lindsay would never have behaved like this, because Captain Sir John Lindsay was never here.

• Lord Mansfield : Society has a habit of disregarding one of its own even when opportunity provides.

• Lady Mansfield : I just learned yesterday that Mr. Davinier is in town.

  Lord Mansfield : I'm not surprised, Dido is beginning to sound a lot like him.

• Dido Elizabeth Belle : Is Mabel a slave?

  Lord Mansfield : I beg your pardon?

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : Is... Mabel... a slave?

  Lord Mansfield : She is free, and under our protection.

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : Oh, like me.

• Lord Mansfield : What do you want, Dido? What precisely are you looking for? I have enabled every rule of convention so that you would know exactly where you belong. And yet, little appears enough for you.

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : And what if there were not a rule, Papa? What if the rule that allowed you to take me did not exist? Would you have returned me to the slums? You *are* courageous. When it comes to the matters you believe in, society is inconsequential. You break every rule when it matters enough, Papa. I am the evidence.

• Lord Mansfield : History will judge whether your optimism is warranted.

• Lady Mansfield : [referring to Dido]  Born on English soil?

  Lord Mansfield : Indeed. He discovered her mother aboard a captured Spanish slave ship.

  Lady Mansfield : So, now we have two nieces in our guardianship.

  Lord Mansfield : Elizabeth was in much need of a companion.

  Lady Mansfield : And that is what we shall say when questions are asked?

  Lord Mansfield : We shall say that in accordance with her birthright, she is entitled to live beneath this roof. That is the nature of order.

• Dido Elizabeth Belle : We are to finally come out?

  Lord Mansfield : Elizabeth is to come out.

  Lady Ashford : Dido is not.

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : But... why?

  Lord Mansfield : You understand the ways of the world for a female, Dido. Elizabeth has no income.

  Lady Ashford : [to Elizabeth]  You are to meet as many gentlemen as possible before we make the match.

  Lord Mansfield : [to Dido]  When all this is gone to her father, there'll be nothing left for her.

  Dido Elizabeth Belle : And... me?

  Lady Ashford : Any gentlemen of good breeding would be unlikely to form a serious attachment to Dido, and a man without... would lower her position in society.

  Elizabeth Murray : She is not merely my cousin, Mama. She is my sister.