- Miss Birdseye: [on Basil] Your cousin looks like a genius, my dear.
- Olive Chancellor: It's only a distant cousin. He's a lawyer from Mississippi, he left his mother and his sisters behind and he's come to try to make his living in New York. He's not in sympathy, I'm afraid.
- Miss Birdseye: Well, I've often found that people are only waiting for the light.
- Basil Ransome: On the rights of minorities I am 300 years old out of date. But see, I haven't come too late. I have come too soon.
- Basil Ransome: Don't you believe in the coming of a better day that it's possible to do something for the human race?
- Basil Ransome: Hmm, well... what strikes me most, Ms. Olive, it's that human race's got to bear its troubles.
- Olive Chancellor: But that's what men say to keep women in the position they have made for them.
- Basil Ransome: The position of women is nothing but to make fools of men.
- Olive Chancellor: Don't you believe in our emancipation?
- Basil Ransome: I'll tell you after the meeting.