Elliott Templeton: You know, I've never been able to understand why, when there's so much space in the world, people should deliberately choose to live in the Middle West.
Kosti: Enlightenment is the curse of civilization. A man who wastes his energy on knowledge is a fool. The more he learns, the more he wants and the more unhappy he becomes. Tear down the schoolhouses! Burn the books! Strangle the teachers! Then the world will get somewhere.
Elliott Templeton: I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi.
Larry Darrell: If I ever acquire wisdom, I suppose I'll be wise enough to know what to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham: Elliott has no friends, only acquaintances.
Elliott Templeton: Though you've lived half your life in diplomatic society and half the capitals of the world, you remain hopelessly American.
Elliott Templeton: The enjoyment of art is the only remaining ecstasy that's neither immoral nor illegal.
Isabel Bradley: You can be wonderfully disagreeable when you like, Uncle Elliott.
Elliott Templeton: I know, it's one of my most cherished gifts.
Isabel Bradley: Larry, how can you bear to sit here in a backwash, when America is living through the most glorious adventure the world has ever known? You've been away a year now, a whole year out of your life. You just can't go on loafing for ever! Or, can you?
Larry Darrell: It's possible.
Isabel Bradley: But I don't want to live on $3000 a year.
Larry Darrell: The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
Elliott Templeton: I admit, he is good looking, and his clothes fit.
