From Hell (2001)

Ian Holm: Sir William Gull

Photos 

Quotes 

• Sir William Gull : One day men will look back and say that I gave birth to the twentieth century.

  Abberline : You're not going to see the twentieth century.

• Masonic Governor : You stand before your peers, masons and doctors both.

  Sir William Gull : I have no peers present here.

  Masonic Governor : What?

  Sir William Gull : No man amongst you is fit to judge... the mighty art that I have wrought. Your rituals are empty oaths you neither understand nor live by. The Great Architect speaks to me. He is the balance where my deeds are weighed and judged... not you.

• Sir William Gull : Below the skin of history are London's veins. These symbols, the mitre, the pentacle star, even someone as ignorant and degenerate as you can sense that they course with energy and meaning. I am that meaning. I am that energy.

• Sir William Gull : Laudanum is a derivative of opium. Apart from doctors and addicts, not many would be able to detect it. How long have you been chasing the dragon, Inspector?

• Sir William Gull : [Re: Dr Ferral]  He knows all about Anatomy and nothing about the soul.

• Liz Stride : [approaching his carriage carefully]  'ello, sir.

  Jack the Ripper : Is anything wrong?

  Liz Stride : No sir. For a second, I thought you were someone else.

  Jack the Ripper : Oh.

  [offers her absinthe spiked with laudanum] 

  Jack the Ripper : Thirsty?

  Liz Stride : [takes it and drinks]  Always parched, sir.

• Jack the Ripper : Why have you called me here, Netley.

  Netley, the Coachman : It's just... you say only three more have to be killed. I don't know if I can do it anymore. It's in all the papers. I'm just a simple chap, sir. I'm not a great man like you. I just don't know where I am anymore.

  Jack the Ripper : There, there Netley. I shall tell you where we are. We're in the darkest region of the human brain, a radiant abyss where men go to find themselves.

  Netley, the Coachman : I don't understand, sir.

  Jack the Ripper : Hell, Netley. We are in hell.

• Sir William Gull : Have you forgotten the most telling fact? What ever the Prince may be, he knows little or nothing about human anatomy.

• Sir William Gull : I think you mean to draw a Lister knife.

• Polly Nichols : [in Jack the Ripper's carriage]  That was the thing that was in my dream. What's it called again?

  Jack the Ripper : Cleopatra's Needle.

  Polly Nichols : Cleopatra, she was a beauty.

  Jack the Ripper : They were carved 1450 years before the son of God was born. Six men died bringing it here.

  [kills Polly] 

• Sir William Gull : [Lecture on the human heart]  The human heart is a dense and powerful muscle, much like the organic equivalent of mahogany, and notoriously difficult to burn. About the size of a fist, it provides the motor power for the circulatory system. The heart contains two atria, two ventricle, and four valves. It is in effect a single pump, powering a double circuit. In the adult the heart rate averages 70 to 80 beats a minute. Such is the force of the heart beat, that if the body's largest artery, the aorta, is severed: a six-foot jet of blood is released.