- [first lines]
- Sir Humphrey Harcourt: How do you fellows manage to look so comfortably, Vickers?
- Major Geoffrey Vickers: We may look it Sir, but we're not. They say the first forty years are about the hottest up here on the frontier, after that you get used to it.
- Sir Humphrey Harcourt: Really?
- [last lines]
- Sir Charles Macefield: [throws Geoffrey's letter into the fire in which Geoffrey admits his defiance of orders which is a court-martialed offense but which resulted in the British getting an upper hand in Crimea] For conspicuous gallantry.
- Sir Charles Macefield: Well, I'll finish my drink. I have a cowardly aversion to meeting reptiles socially 'til I've had at least one sherry and bitters.
- Lady Octavia Warrenton: Colonel Campbell has just been begging me to find him a wife. Now what particular quality do you most admire in a woman?
- Colonel Campbell: The quality of silence!
- Lady Octavia Warrenton: Now, Colonel, you're flattering me just as dear Lord Melbourne did once when we sat next to each other at an intolerable meal call banquet. "Lady Warrenton," he said, "you have the power to drive men mad."
- Colonel Campbell: [laconically] I can believe that!
- Surat Khan: Oh, so it was Captain Randall who so imprudently attempted to penetrate the line? Poor fellow! He paid the penalty for his foolishness!
- Major Geoffrey Vickers: [taken aback] He's... he's dead?
- Surat Khan: Oh, my friend, life is sweet and dear when one cannot have it! That's why I sent for you.
- Major Geoffrey Vickers: [addressing the Light Brigade prior to the attack] Surat Khan is on the field with the opposing Russian forces. The same Surat Khan who massacred the women and children of Chukoti. Our chance has come! Show no mercy! Let no power on Earth stop you! Prove to the world that no man could kill women and children and live to boast of it! Men of the Twenty-seventh. our objective is Surat Khan! Forward!
- Colonel Campbell: [to Geoffrey] When you've been soldiering as long as I have, you'll find it's best to follow orders regardless.
- Surat Khan: I sometimes think, Sir Charles, that a great government resembles a beautiful woman, who, intoxicated with her own beauty, is apt to withdraw from a sincere suitor the favors she's always granted. And when she finds her suitor console himself with another beauty... regrets her coldness.
- Sir Charles Macefield: Interesting. And what does she do then?
- Surat Khan: She claims the privilege of any beautiful woman and changes her mind... before she's lost her suitor forever. Do you not agree?
- Sir Charles Macefield: The only great government I'm acquainted with is singularly masculine. It makes up its mind. And once having reached a decision, adheres to it.
- Surat Khan: I'm afraid we're losing ourselves in a flight of fantasy.
- Sir Charles Macefield: Yes, perhaps, yes.
- Lady Octavia Warrenton: Never marry a man with an Indian liver.
- Major Geoffrey Vickers: Let me assure you, Lady Warrenton, I won't.
- Sir Benjamin Warrenton: Pay no attention to my wife Miss Campbell. She's two obsessions in life, giving me pills and scandalous intrigue.
- Sir Benjamin Warrenton: Good trip, my boy?
- Lady Octavia Warrenton: Don't be absurd Benji, there's no such thing as a good trip in India. One either travels in comparative discomfort or in complete discomfort.
- Captain Perry Vickers: Mine was complete.