- [an animal rights protester has just disrupted the shooting]
- Sir Randolph Nettleby: This is a very well produced pamphlet. Where do you get a thing like this printed? Is it expensive? You don't mind my asking you?
- Cornelius Cardew: Oh no, not at all. I know a very good printer in Dorking, just near where I live. An excellent man of anarchistic views. He gives me very good rates.
- Sir Randolph: Ah, special terms. Hmm. He wouldn't give me such good ones, I suppose.
- Cardew: Are you a pamphleteer too, sir?
- Sir Randolph: Well, I was thinking of making a sort of foray in that direction.
- Cardew: A polemic, would you say?
- Sir Randolph: Yes, I think that's the right word.
- Cardew: Would you call it a *diatribe*?
- Sir Randolph: Yes, I
- [chuckle]
- Sir Randolph: could call it a diatribe.
- Cardew: The Ruin of Rural England - A Diatribe
- Sir Randolph: Precisely. I don't think we should continue our discussion here... my fellow murderers are rather hot blooded.
- Lady Aline Hartlip: Why are you smiling?
- Sir Randolph Nettleby: [Introspectively] I can't imagine... except that... sometimes when my thoughts about the future are particularly gloomy, I find myself feeling more and more light-hearted. I suppose I've always fancied the idea of taking to the hills when the barbarian hordes overrun us. I think I should enjoy that.
- Count Tibor Rakassyi: [Aloud to all at the table] Do you hear that, duck?
- [Rhetorically to the duck]
- Count Tibor Rakassyi: If you're out there on the last day flying over me, I can tell you, you haven't a hope. Bang, bang, and it will all be over!
- [laughter from the diners]
- Osbert Nettleby: If you kill her, I will kill you!
- Ellen: [Shocked] Osbert!
- Count Tibor Rakassyi: Oh, you will, will you? How do you propose to do that, may I ask?
- Osbert Nettleby: I will kill you by prayer.
- [Additional laughter from dinner guests]
- Lady Minnie Nettleby: [to Lady Hartlip] I've always thought your taste in men more Ibsenite than Chekhovian.
- Lord Gilbert Hartlip: [to Lady Hartlip] It's quite usual for men to have distractions that don't affect their wives.
- Sir Randolph Nettleby: [Understatingly] You don't approve of our sport, I fear.
- Cornelius Cardew: It's not my idea of sport! It's my idea of murder!
- Sir Randolph Nettleby: It's not a bad idea to get into the habit of writing down one's thoughts. Saves one having to bother other people with them.
- Sir Randolph Nettleby: You weren't shooting like a gentleman!
- [to Lord Hartlip after he had accidentally shot the beater Tom Harker]
- Tom Harker: You know, the landlord is the cause of crime. He invents the laws and invents the punishment for breaking them. Here, hold this. Now if the land belonged to us all, stands to reason there'd be no law of trespass.