Victoria & Abdul (2017)

Major Bigge: The key to good service is standing still and moving backwards. The most important thing is you must not look at her.

Mohammed Baksh: Ugh! Five thousand miles to present a bloody medal to the oppressor of the entire Indian subcontinent.

Abdul Karim: You don't realize what a great honor this is for us.
Mohammed Baksh: Have you ever tasted English food? They eat pigs' blood.
Abdul Karim: They do not eat pigs' blood.
Mohammed Baksh: I'm telling you. They put pigs' blood in the sausages and brains of sheep. Ugh! The place is completely barbaric.

Abdul Karim: The art of carpets came to India from Persia with the great Emperor Akbar. The skill of a carpet is to bring all the different kinds of threads together and weave something we can all stand on.
Queen Victoria: You seem to know a great deal about it.
Abdul Karim: My family were carpet makers, but now I write in the book. Life is like a carpet. We weave in and out to make a pattern.
Queen Victoria: That is a very beautiful image.

Abdul Karim: Look. Here is the bird of freedom caught forever in the design.
Queen Victoria: So, in India you are a poet?
Abdul Karim: No. In India, I make a ledger of the prisoners.
Queen Victoria: We are all prisoners, Mr. Karim.

Sir Henry Ponsonby: What can they be talking about? A servant and an Indian. What on Earth does she see in him?
Miss Phipps: Well, he is rather handsome.

Abdul Karim: You have never tasted Indian food? Dal? Rogan josh? Biryani with mango chutney.
Queen Victoria: Mango chutney?
Abdul Karim: Chutney made out of mango.
Queen Victoria: What is mango?
Abdul Karim: Mango is the queen of fruit.
Queen Victoria: What does it taste like?
Abdul Karim: Like an orange and a peach.
Queen Victoria: Hm...

Queen Victoria: I'm so lonely. Everyone I've really loved has died, and I just go on and on... It's an impossible position. No one really knows what it's like to be Queen. I'm hated by millions of people all over the world. I have had nine children, all vain and jealous, and at loggerheads with each other. And Bertie's a complete embarrassment. And look at me! A fat, lame, impotent, silly old woman. What is the point, Abdul? What is the point?
Abdul Karim: Service.
Queen Victoria: Service?
Abdul Karim: I think we are not here to worry about ourselves. We are here for a greater purpose. In the Koran it says, "We are here for the good of others."

Abdul Karim: What are you complaining about? We have our own carriage with a bathroom. They've made a very nice bed for you on the floor.
Mohammed Baksh: Oh, I'm dying here. I want to go home.
Abdul Karim: I'm getting sick of your negative attitude. Life is a big adventure. You just need to open up and enjoy it.

Abdul Karim: We're on holiday. And what? What on Earth can possibly go wrong?

Queen Victoria: Where did you say it was from, Mr. Puccini?
Puccini: From my new opera, Your Majesty, Manon Lescaut. About two lovers who are separated by the class divide... But they run away together.
Queen Victoria: Oh, it sounds marvelous!
Puccini: But she is imprisoned for her love.
Queen Victoria: Oh...
Puccini: But they escape.
Queen Victoria: Bravo!
Puccini: But finally she dies, and he is utterly bereft.
Queen Victoria: I'm not sure we do like the sound of it after all. We prefer comic opera. Do you know any Gilbert and Sullivan?

Queen Victoria: There is just one thing I've been curious about the whole afternoon. What does she look like behind her veil?
Abdul Karim: You must see her.
Queen Victoria: Is that allowed?
Abdul Karim: You're a lady. And the Empress of India.

Queen Victoria: These are my servants, Mohammed and Ahmed. And this is the Durbar Room.
Prime Minister: What the hell is going on here, Ponsonby?
Queen Victoria: The carvings are from Uttar Pradesh. And the carpet was woven in a jail in Agra. Perfect, I think, for the tableau. But the pièce de résistance is the Peacock Throne. An exact copy of the one at Agra. And, of course, the Koh-i-noor. Now I really do feel like the Empress of India.
Bertie, Prince of Wales: I thought she was supposed to be dying.

Mohammed Baksh: Abdul does what everyone else does. He, uh... He looks for preferment. He curries favor. He crawls up the stinking greasy pole of the shitty British Empire. Making fools of all of you, because he is a servant. An Indian Muslim servant, and you are all quaking in your boots because he's beating you at your own game.
Bertie, Prince of Wales: No one is quaking in their boots! We are the most powerful nation on Earth. At the height of our influence.
Mohammed Baksh: In that case, the only way is down. So stick your stupid British Empire up your stinky royal bottom hole, Mr. Bertie Prince, sir. I hope he makes the whole damn thing come tumbling down.

Bertie, Prince of Wales: Don't you see, Mama? He's using his position for his own gain.
Queen Victoria: And how does that make him any different from any of you?

Bertie, Prince of Wales: I have put up with you for over 50 years! You will drop this forthwith or...
Queen Victoria: Or, or, or, or, Bertie?
Bertie, Prince of Wales: Or... We will have you certified insane! And removed from office immediately. Here are the papers signed by Dr. Reid.
Queen Victoria: I am 81 years of age. I've had nine children, and 42 grandchildren, and have almost a billion citizens. I have rheumatism, a collapsed uterus. I'm morbidly obese and deaf in one ear. I have known eleven Prime Ministers and passed 2,347 pieces of legislation. I've been in office 62 years, 234 days. Thus, I am the longest-serving monarch in world history. I'm responsible for five households and a staff of over 3,000. I am cantankerous, boring, greedy, fat, ill-tempered, at times selfish and myopic, both metaphorically and literally. I am perhaps disagreeably attached to power and should not have smashed the Emperor of Russia's egg. But I am anything but insane. If the Household wish to disobey me, so be it. Let them do it to my face.

—
+ Quotes on the IMDb