The History Boys » Quotes (Movie)

(about the motorbike/boys, to Hector) Mrs. Lintott: Well of course the boys knew, they had it first hand.

Headmaster: There's a vacancy in history. Tom Irwin: (Thoughtfully) That's very true. Headmaster: In the school. Tom Irwin: Ah.

Mrs. Lintott: Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck. Hector: Dorothy! Mrs. Lintott: I'd have thought you'd have liked that. It's a compound adjective. You like compound adjectives.

Posner: I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.

Rudge: I did all the other stuff like Stalin was a sweetie and Wilfred Owen was a wuss.

Mrs. Lintott: Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude?

Dakin: The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers.
Scripps: No.
Dakin: It's consolation. All literature is consolation.

Mrs. Lintott: The smallest of incidents... the junction of a dizzying range of alternatives... any one of which could have had a different outcome.

Mrs. Lintott: Unsurprisingly I am Tot, or Totty. Some irony there, one feels.

Hector: At school you don't get parole. Good behavior just brings a longer sentence.

Lockwood: Posner would make a good monk. 'Cept he's a Jew.
Crowther: Do Jews have monks?
Posner: Yes. I'm one now.

(about A.E. Housman)
Timms: Wasn't he a nancy, sir?
Hector: Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop! Do not use that word!
(Hector hits Timms on the head with an exercise book)
Timms: But you use it, sir!
Hector: I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.

(as Irwin prepares to get on Hector's bike)
Dakin: Do you want my Tudor Economic Documents?

(in an art-appreciation lesson, discussing the nudes of Michaelangelo)
Timms: These aren't women. They're just men with tits. And the tits look as if they've been put on with an ice-cream scoop!

Mrs. Lintott: History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.