APAD: Take it or leave it

 

Meaning: This is my best offer, accept it or the deal is off.

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In the 1964 film "My Fairlady," when Eliza, "a prisoner of the gutter," showed

up at Higgins's to take the professor up on his brag, "in six months I could

pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball..." by teaching her how to speak,

 

    Higgins: How much do you propose to pay me for these lessons?

 

    Eliza: Oh, I know what's right.

           My lady friend gets French lessons

           for eighteenpence an hour

           from a real French gentleman.

 

           You wouldn't have the face

           to ask me the same

           for teachin' me my own language

           as you would for French.

           

           So I won't give more than a shillin'.

           Take it or leave it.

 

The scripts can't do justice to the performance. One really has to see the movie

(I'd bet most already did.) to appreciate it as Harrison and Hepburn acted so

memorably.