It happens that I am tired... I am tired of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It happens that I am tired of being a man. I'm tired of living...
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- [George the cat meows] Yeah, I guess you're right George, we better trim that tree. If we don't hurry, we'll be too late !
- Hello there... I-I-I-I... Oh dear... Oh... Oh, you're-you're... I'm Willy Krueger and I'm custodian over at the Beck Apartments, but, but you know that, don't you. You know that. I guess nobody here can see me or hear me except you. I didn't bring a gift, I, but I, I guess that's not important. Thank you for everything you've done for me. As long as I can remember you've been right by my side. I'll never forget when you walked with me right in those first few hours after I lost Martha. I-I've always been able to count on you, when I felt dark inside and when I... You were right there, right, every time, right there. Even when I didn't feel good about myself, I knew that you cared for me enough, and that, that made me feel better. Like that time I got mad with Mabel Huntington because she broke her pipes on purpose just so she could have somebody to see while I came up and fixed them for her. Boy, I hollered at her, boy I hollered real loud. But then, then I got to thinking - you loved Mabel just as much as you loved me and I should treat her the way you want me to. I believe I talked to you about that at the time. Well, I started visiting her and we became friends. I saw her almost every day until the day she died. I love you. You're my closest, my finest friend. And that means that I can hold my head high, wherever I go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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- Books, every few days I have to tell a man or a woman something I don't want to. I've been practicing medicine for 29 years, and I still don't know how to do it well.
- You know, Books; I'm not an especially brave man. But, if I were you and had lived my entire life the way you have, I don't think that the death I just described to you is not the one I would choose.
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- God uses the good ones. The bad ones use God.
- Homer Grindstaff: Is this your way of stickin' up a bank?
Mattie Appleyard: Nope. No. No, I'm not a bank robber. I'm just an American that's come into a bank to cash a check.
Homer Grindstaff: I'll see you in hell, first!
Mattie Appleyard: Well that's very possible, Mr. Grindstaff. Very possible, indeed. And sooner than you think if you don't get me my money right quick! 
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- John O'Hanlan: I suppose you've come to see me about that little thing last night.
Marshal Anderson: That wasn't any little thing you did, O'Hanlan. That was a Bannister you shot. I've been wanting to do it for years. - John O'Hanlan: How much money do you want, Harley?
Harley Sullivan: Fifteen or twenty dollars ought to do me.
John O'Hanlan: What do you need it for?
Harley Sullivan: Things.
John O'Hanlan: Well, what kind of things?
Harley Sullivan: Just-just things. You know, like a drink of whiskey if I wanted it, or a new shirt or something.
John O'Hanlan: You already have two shirts. You don't want to wear but one of them at a time unless it's winter.
Harley Sullivan: There you go thinking like a Republican again.
John O'Hanlan: Well, you don't bring up politics while you're borrowing money, Harley. It ain't seemly! - When you're out on the range with nobody to talk to most of the time but your horse, you do a lot of dreaming. And I dreamed of being a man of property. But you know... you know Mr. Willoughby, and I didn't realize it then, but I've always been a man of property. I have my horse. I have my blanket and I have the whole West to ride in. How could a man own more than that? No, Mr. Willoughby, I'm a cowboy. Always have been... I know now I always will be.
- Jenny: When I was young, I had all sorts of dreams. There's something awfully sad about an old dream.
John O'Hanlan: Yeah, I know. When I was a boy down in the panhandle, that was before I slipped my hobbles, I was a real stargazer. I tell you, Jenny, I dreamed and I planned big things. And then I started drifting... and I've been drifting ever since. - Harley Sullivan: I thought you know me better than that, John, after all the years we rode together.
John O'Hanlan: Well, I guess it just goes to prove that you never really know a man until the chips are down and you need him the most. - John O'Hanlan: Well, how much money does he need to get her liver fixed?
Jenny: Five hundred dollars.
John O'Hanlan: Five hundred dollars for a liver?
Jenny: That's what the big doctor in Chicago charges. And he's got all kinds of fancy letters in back of his name.
John O'Hanlan: I don't care what's in back of his name! Five hundred dollars - that's more than you have to pay for a good horse! - Jenny: Did you ever love a woman, Johnny? I mean, really love her?
John O'Hanlan: Yeah. Thought I did once. Come to find out it was indigestion. - I don't like to say this about my own brother, but he just never was what you'd call an outstanding citizen. The truth is, he, well, he wasn't worth the sweat on a waterbag.
- I'm not opening any letter from a lawyer on an empty stomach.
- Harley Sullivan: How ya doin'?
John O'Hanlan: I never felt better glued together! 
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- I don't imagine your pa ever mentioned shooting people, and burning their house down, and stealing, and things like that?
- Dee Bishop:To tell you the truth...
Mace Bishop: Yeah, yeah, liars always start that way. - Dee Bishop: [incredulous] You robbed a bank? You, Mace?
Mace Bishop: Well, Dee, the bank was there... and I was there... and there wasn't very much of anybody else there... and it just seemed like the thing to do. Y'know, it's not like you didn't - something you never heard of. Lots of people rob banks for all sorts of different reasons.
Dee Bishop: [bemused] You just walked into a bank and helped yourself to ten thousand dollars 'cause it seemed like the thing to do?
Mace Bishop: That's about the way it was, yeah, as, as well as I can remember, yeah. 
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- [Screaming to the townspeople after finding Arthur has been taken from the jail and lynched] How could you let it happen?
- [to Whittier, who is reluctant to give him a gun] Search for a place where there are no bruises and tie it up with a ribbon, and tell yourself that what's inside is the sum total of your life, and what I didn't see was the day a man decides not to face the world is the day he better step out of it. Now give me that gun!
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- Alexander Bowen: That woman doesn't fear a thing, does she, Sam?
Sam Burnett: Nothing but dishonesty... and dirt. - Sam Burnett: Just one thing, ma'am. If you're dead set on making this trip to Texas, you're going the wrong way.
Martha Evans: Oh, thank you, Mr. Burnett. You are a very capable guide.
Sam Burnett: Well, I can tell north from south. 
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- Heinrich Dorfmann: Gentlemen, I have been examining this aeroplane.
Frank Towns: Yeah?
Heinrich Dorfmann: Yes. We've everything we need here to build a new one and fly it out. Now, if you'd like to have a look at my calculations, I don't know whether you can read my handwriting.
Frank Towns: Are you trying to be funny? - Your theory's fine, but you get this mister... that engine's rated at two thousand horsepower and if I was ever fool enough to let it get started up it'd shake your patched-up pile of junk into a thousand pieces, and cut us up into mincemeat with the propeller.
- I've lost five men, Lew. Gabriel in there, he's on the way, that'll be six. Are you asking me to try to kill the rest of them trying to get a deathtrap off the ground. I don't know... I don't know, Lew. It won't work... it just can't work.
- If you hadn't made a career out of being a drunk you might not have been a second-rate navigator in a firth-rate outfit. And if you'd not stayed in your bunk to kill that last bottle, maybe you might have checked that engineer's report on the radio and we might not be here now. All right!
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- Now let me tell you something, Johnson, before you get on my wrong side. My corn I take seriously, because it's mine. And my potatoes and tomatoes and my fence I take note of because they're mine. But this war is not mine and I don't take note of it.
- [at the site of his wife's grave] I don't even know what to say to you any more, Martha. There's not much I can tell you about this war. It's like all wars, I guess. The undertakers are winning. And the politicians who talk about the glory of it. And the old men who talk about the need of it. And the soldiers, well, they just wanna go home. I guess you're not so lonely any more, with Ann and James and Jacob. And maybe the boy. You didn't know Ann, did you? Well, you'd like her. You'd like her, Martha. Why, she and James are so much alike, they're just like... no... no... we were never that much alike, were we Martha? We just sorta grew alike through the years. But I wish, I wish I could just know what you're thinking about it all, Martha. And maybe it wouldn't seem so bad to me if I knew what you thought about it.
[He notices the church bells are ringing] You never give up, do you? - What do you do with dead soldiers?
- There's some difference between lovin' and likin'. When I married Jennie's mother, I-I didn't love her - I liked her... I liked her a lot. I liked Martha for at least three years after we were married and then one day it just dawned on me I loved her. I still do... still do. You see, Sam, when you love a woman without likin' her, the night can be long and cold, and contempt comes up with the sun.
- That fella, Tinkham - he's the only man I know that started at the bottom and went down in the world. He'd steal horses for nothing and now he gets paid for it.
- Charlie Anderson: It's no easy job, Sam, to take care of a woman.
Lt. Sam: No, sir.
Charlie Anderson: They expect things they never ask for. And when they don't get them, they ask you why. Sometimes they don't ask... and just go ahead and punish you for not doing something you didn't know you were supposed to do in the first place. - Even after all these years, 16 years gone, 16 years. And even so, I somehow feel that she's not really dead but just resting. And it's as though I'm expecting her to get up and walk home with me.
- Boy Anderson: What'd I do?
Charlie Anderson: It's what you haven't done, boy. A man who eats with his hat on is going nowhere in a hurry. Now, your mother wanted you all raised as good Christians, and I may not be able to do that thorny job as well as she could, but I can do something about your manners. - I'm glad you're here, Johnson. I've been meaning to have a word with your people about those cannons of yours. The chickens have stopped laying, the cows have dried up. Who do I send the bill to?
- Charlie Anderson: Can you give me one good reason why I should let my sons march down that road like a bunch of damn fools?
Lt. Johnson: Virginia needs all her sons, Mr. Anderson.
Charlie Anderson: They don't belong to the state they belong to ME! When they were babies I never saw the state comin' around here with a spare tit! - [to the engineer, explaining the decision to burn the prison bound train] You run a sad kind of a train, mister. You take people away when they don't want to go and won't bring them back when they're ready.
- If we don't try we don't do. And if we don't do, why are we here on this Earth?
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Now, as I understand it, a mademoiselle is a madam who ain't quite made it yet - only younger and friskier. I'd call it a compliment.  |  
- Mr. Martin Turner: You haven't done much walking have you Hobbs?
Roger Hobbs: Only since I was about four years old! - There ought to be an un-Edison, an un-Thomas Alva Edison who un-invents things, and the first thing they ought to un-invent is that television.
- Peggy Hobbs: Didn't you get his last name?
Roger Hobbs: No, I just called hey Joe, it's from my experience that there's usually one Joe in a group of fellows. - I'd be more religious if something wouldn't happen to that television set. Just praying that lightning would strike it, not the entire circuit, just our set.
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- Sergeant Darius P. Posey: You! You're supposed to be dead!
Marshal Guthrie McCabe: I'm sorry, Slim. I didn't quite make it. - [Jesus gives Marshal Guthrie a beer]
Marshal Guthrie McCabe: Thank you, Jesus.
Jesus: Senor, the widow Gomez has delivered a son this morning - a boy.
Marshal Guthrie McCabe: Bully for the widow Gomez!
Jesus: But senor, it has been more than a year ago since Senor Antonio Gomez has been buried in the church house.
Marshal Guthrie McCabe: Well, there are some men you just can't trust to stay where you put 'em. - [while rescuing captives from the Comanches, Marshal McCabe missed voting for his re-election] I didn't get a chance to vote for myself - not even once.
- You know, sometimes it takes a lot more courage to live than it does to die.
- Maj. Frazer: Just how much do you think human lives are worth, McCabe?
Marshal Guthrie McCabe: Whatever the market will bear! No more, no less.
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- [after cross-examining a convicted felon] Your Honor, I don't think I can dignify this - -creature - - with any more questions.
- If you do that one more time, I'll punch you all the way out into the middle of Lake Superior!
- All right, the cat's out of the bag; it's fair game for me to chase it!
- The prosecution would like to separate the motive from the act. Well, that's like trying to take the core from an apple without breaking the skin.
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I may sound like a lunatic, but I'm not crazy! 
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- You shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been that sentimental.
- Anyone could become obsessed with the past with a background like that!
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- Barbara Waggoman: Did you have any trouble getting here?
Will Lockhart: No, we came from Laramie.
Barbara Waggoman: Oh, is that your home?
Will Lockhart: No, ma'am. No, I can't rightly say anyplace is my home.
Barbara Waggoman: Oh, but everybody should have a place to remember and feel they belong to.
Will Lockhart: Well, I-I always feel like I belong... where I am. - Yeah, well, I figure this place owes me somethin' and I'm gonna make it pay.
- Well, maybe this won't be the kind of work you like.
- This is the most unfriendly country I've ever been in. Why is everybody so touchy?
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- Well, there's a difference between men and apples.
- Glyn McLyntock: So you've decided to stay in Portland.
Emerson Cole: For a while, then thought I would drift on down to California
Glyn McLyntock: Still following that star.
Glyn McLyntock: Sometimes it’s better than having a man with a star following you. 
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- Here, let me give you one of my cards. Now if you should want to call me, use this number. This other one is the old number.
- Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
- I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whomever I'm with.
- Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
- Harvey and I sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella." Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers - soon we have friends. And they come over... and they sit with us... and they drink with us... and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey... and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back; but that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us.
- I'd just put Ed Hickey into a taxi. Ed had been mixing his rye with his gin, and I just felt that he needed conveying. Well, anyway, I was walking down along the street and I heard this voice saying, "Good evening, Mr. Dowd." Well, I turned around and here was this big six-foot rabbit leaning up against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that because when you've lived in a town as long as I've lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name. And naturally I went over to chat with him. And he said to me... he said, "Ed Hickey was a little spiffed this evening, or could I be mistaken?" Well, of course, he was not mistaken. I think the world and all of Ed, but he was spiffed. Well, we talked like that for awhile and then I said to him, I said, "You have the advantage on me. You know my name and I don't know yours." And, and right back at me he said, "What name do you like?" Well, I didn't even have to think twice about that. Harvey's always been my favorite name. So I said to him, I said, "Harvey." And, uh, this is the interesting thing about the whole thing: He said, "What a coincidence. My name happens to be Harvey."
- You see, science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space, but any objections.
- Mailman: Beautiful day...
Elwood P. Dowd: Oh, every day is a beautiful day. - Attractive sales lady at a department store: What can I do for you, Mr. Dowd?
Elwood P. Dowd: What did you have in mind? 
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