John Huston

Peachy, I'm heartily ashamed for gettin' you killed instead of going home rich like you deserved to, on account of me bein' so bleedin' high and bloody mighty. Can you forgive me?

Now listen to me you benighted muckers. We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men.

You are going to become soldiers. A soldier does not think. He only obeys. Do you really think that if a soldier thought twice he'd give his life for queen and country? Not bloody likely.

We'll get your riflemen, Peachy, and we'll come back and slaughter the dogs! A drenching in their own blood we'll give them! Riflemen, prepare to advance!

Just looking, Peachy. There's such a thing as admiring beauty for its own sake.

Not for us, thank you. Not after watching Afghans come howling down out of the hills and taking battlefield command when all the officers had copped it.

The more tribes, the more they'll fight, and the better for us.

In any place where they fight, a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find - "D'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dynasty.

It took him half an hour to fall.

Danny's only a man. But he break wind at both ends simultaneous - which is more, I reckon, than any god can do.

Detriments you call us? Detriments? Well I want to remind you it was "detriments" like us that built this bloody Empire and the Izzat of the bloody Raj, 'ats on!

And old Danny fell. Round and round and round and round, like a penny whirligig. Twenty thousand miles and it took him half an hour to fall before he struck the rocks. But do you know what they did to Peachy? They crucified, him, sah, between two pine trees. As Peachy's hands will show.

Put poor Peachy who had never done them any harm. He howled there and he screamed, but he didn't die. And one day they come and they took him down and they said it was a miracle he wasn't dead and then they set him down and they let him go. And Peachy come home, in about, a year. And the mountains they tried to fall on old Peachy, but he was quite safe because Daniel walked before him. And Daniel never let go of Peachy's hand and Peachy never let go of Daniel's head.

You knew Danny, sir. Oh, yes, you knew, most Worshipful Brother.

Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that's all there is to tell. I'll be on my way now sir, I've got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.

Home to what? A porters uniform outside a restaurant, attainin' tips from belching civilians for closing cab doors on them and their blowsy women?

Now, the problem is, how to divide five Afghans from three mules and have two Englishmen left over.

I told you; give me a drink. It was all settled right here in this office. Remember? Danny and Me signed a contract, and you witnessed it. You stood over there. I stood there, and Daniel stood here. Remember?

The same - and not the same, who sat besides you in the first class carriage, on the train to Marwar Junction, three summers and a thousand years ago.

They're savages here, one and all. Leave 'em to go back to slaughterin' babes, and playin' stickball with each other's heads, and pissin' on their neighbors.

Keep looking at me. It helps to keep my soul from flying off.

I have urgent business to the South.

Sir, I resent the accusation of blackmail. It is blackmail to obtain money by threats of publishing information in a newspaper. But what blackmail is there in accepting a small retainer for keeping it out of a newspaper?

By telling the editor what I know about his sister, and a certain government official in these parts.

These here make the jewels in the Tower of London look like… cheap family heirlooms.

There's a bigger one. Why, Danny, we only have to fill our pockets and walk out of here to be millionaires. And all of it... all... would make us the two richest men in England.

And now, if you will take us to this Ootah bloke, we will begin his education.

Ah, as long as there's no find, the noble brotherhood will last but when the piles of gold begin to grow... that's when the trouble starts.

Hey you fellas, how 'bout some beans? You want some beans? Goin' through some mighty rough country tomorrow, you'd better have some beans.

We've wounded this mountain. It's our duty to close her wounds. It's the least we can do to show our gratitude for all the wealth she's given us. If you guys don't want to help me, I'll do it alone.

I know what gold does to men's souls.

Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?

A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.

Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.

If I were you boys, I wouldn't talk or even think about women. T'aint good for your health.

Water's precious. Sometimes may be more precious than gold.

Aah, gold's a devilish sort of thing, anyway. You start out, you tell yourself you'll be satisfied with 25,000 handsome smackers worth of it. So help me, Lord, and cross my heart. Fine resolution. After months of sweatin' yourself dizzy, and growin' short on provisions, and findin' nothin', you finally come down to 15,000, then ten. Finally, you say, "Lord, let me just find $5,000 worth and I'll never ask for anythin' more the rest of my life."

Yeah, here in this joint it seems like a lot. But I tell you, if you was to make a real strike, you couldn't be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death would keep you from trying to add 10,000 more. Ten, you'd want to get twenty-five; twenty-five you'd want to get fifty; fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know. Always one more.

Without me, you two would die here, more miserable than rats.

Now here's where we're bound for, hereabouts. Don't show properly whether there's mountains, swamp, or desert. That shows the makers of the map themselves don't know for sure. Once on the ground, all we gotta do is open our eyes and look around. Yes, and blow our noses, too. Believe it or not, I knew a fellow once who could smell gold like a jackass can smell water.

What's that you say? Go back? Ha, ha. Well, tell my old grandmother! I've got two very elegant bedfellows who kick at the first drop of rain and hide in the closet when thunder rumbles. My, my, my, what great prospectors, two shoe clerks readin' a magazine about prospectin' for gold in the land of the midnight sun, south of the border, or west of the Rockies, ha, ha, ha...

Go ahead, go ahead, throw it. If you did, you'd never leave this wilderness alive. Without me, you two would die here more miserable than rats.

Let me tell you something, my two fine bedfellows, you're so dumb, there's nothin' to compare ya with, you're dumber than the dumbest jackass. Look at each other, will ya? Did you ever see anything like yourself for bein' dumb specimens. You're so dumb, you don't even see the riches you're treadin' on with your own feet. Yeah, don't expect to find nuggets of molten gold. It's rich but not that rich. And here ain't the place to dig. It comes from someplace further up. Up there, up there's where we've got to go. UP THERE!

Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her.

I just cut loose one of God's creatures at the end of his rope.

So that one of God's creatures could be free from panic, and scamper home safe and free. A little act of grace, Maxine.

I want to explain something to you... A man has got just so much in his emotional bank balance. Mine has run out. It's stone dry. I can't draw a check on it. There's nothing left to draw out.

I thought you were sexless. But you've just become a woman. You know how I know that? Because you, not me, are taking pleasure in my being tied up. All women, whether they want to face it or not, want to see a man in a tied-up situation. They spend their lives trying to get a man into a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled when they can get a man or as many men as they can, into a tied-up situation.

You better go now, Miss Fellowes, the party's over. Right now I'm no longer in a position to discharge my responsibility of protecting you. A responsibility from which you discharged me. Just go, Miss Fellowes. Just go.

Nothing could be worse for a girl in your unstable condition, to be mixed up with a man in, in my unstable condition because two people in unstable conditons are like two countries facing each other in unstable conditons. The, eh, destructive potential, eh, could blow the whole world to bits!

Maxine, don't rob me of the credit for my own small accomplishments.

You can't go on all alone. Think of how it will feel after so many years.

There's no need for the shawl. God has played God, and set him free.

The Fantastic Level and the Realistic Level are the two levels upon which we live.

It's very serious. The child is emotionally precocious.

Also, she is traveling under the wing of a military escort of a butch vocal teacher.

And what do you respect in me, Miss Thin Standing-up Female Buddha?

I can get down the hill, Maxine, but I'm not too sure about getting back up.

I said to this girl, I said, "Let us, let us kneel down and pray together." And we did. We knelt. And then all of the sudden the - kneeling position turned into a reclining position.

I wonder how long it takes to sweat the faculty of a Baptist Female College out of a bus that's parked in the sun when it's a 100 degrees in the shade.

You're as dangerous as you are young and lovely. And it's you're being young and lovely that makes you so dangerous, that gives you this destructive potential over a destructible man.

I wonder as we examine our hearts together, in this place set aside for worship, how many of us here can say, "I rule my own spirit." For, how weak is man? How often do we - how often - how often do we stray from the straight and narrow? For only when we abide in the Lord are we like cities without walls. Only then can we defend ourselves against Satan and his temptations. We cannot rule ourselves alone.

I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this angry, petulant old man in whom you believe. You've turned your backs on the God of love and compassion and invented for yourselves this cruel, senile, delinquent who blames the world and all that he created for his own faults! Close your windows. Close your doors! Close your hearts - against the truth of our God!

No. Yes. No. No. It should be licensed. I mean, at least until you're old enough for a - a driver's license. Now, you get out of my room. Would you get off my bed! I-I'll keep my eyes shut until you've gone out of my room.

Yes. No! I mean, yes. Yes. Lord, lead me not unto temptation. Now, go on home and find my way all by myself.

I thought Fred could tame them. He was a fisherman and I've got a busload of man-eating sharks.

Maxine, you got to help me with her, honey. She's not only trying to get me fired, she's also trying to pin on me a rape charge, a charge of statutory rape.

That's when a man is seduced by a girl under 20.

All right. We'll play God tonight, like kids play houses with old broken crates and boxes. We'll cut the damn lizard loose so he can go back to his bushes, cause God won't do it and we are playing God here tonight.

Men with men's hearts. Wild and free hearts of men. They knew hunger and they fed their appetites. They fed their appetites! Appetites that I have inherited! I defy you! Shannon defies you! Get out your tomahawks! Get out your scalping knives! Sharpen your scalping knives. Scalp me!

The pain we cause him. We've poisoned his atmosphere. We've slaughtered his creatures of the wild. We've polluted his rivers. We've even taken God's noblest creation, Man, and - and brainwashed him into becoming our own product, not God's.

I think that's the one with the leaky roof which you won't find out about until it rains and then it'll be too late to do anything about it except to swim out of it.

Iguanas - giant lizards native to this part of Mexico. It is alleged they taste like chicken.