- Madame Rita Cavallini: Love is just a beast that you feed all through the night, and when the morning comes, love dies.
- Cornelius Van Tuyl: You know, Tom, there are no people in the world who are really bad. Just some poor devils who find it harder to be good, than you. That's all.
- Cornelius Van Tuyl: I'm not complaining. I've lived my life and its been very sweet. But the fact remains, I've lived my life. Don't you waste your Springtime on a stupid old fellow, 51 years old.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: How do you like, then, if I drink to what I see in your eyes and you drink to what you see in mine?
- Madame Rita Cavallini: You see my flowers, here. So fresh and beautiful.
- Tom Armstrong: You're crushing them!
- Madame Rita Cavallini: Oh, what does it matter? They were born to die. Our meeting here tonight, what is it but a bunch of flowers that we love and smell and throw away. Why should we take them home with us and watch them die?
- Madame Rita Cavallini: You would want me to stop singing and live in this horrible New York? The most disagreeable place I ever saw. Oh no, my friend, I wouldn't marry him. That would be the biggest mistake.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: A dream, I guess that's all I am. A dream that's lost her way and rests for a minute in your sleeping heart. Tomorrow you'll wake up and the little dream's all gone.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: I forgot that you're a clergyman.
- Tom Armstrong: And I forgot that you were a golden nightingale.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: Let me tell you something that I hope you'll remember. Yesterday's a dream that we have forgot. Tomorrow's the hope for some great happiness. It'll never come. Before, behind, just clouds and shadows. Nothing that is real, but, just these little minutes that we call Today.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: Why speak about next year. That's so far away.
- Tom Armstrong: In my profession, one has to think a great deal about things that are far away.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: That's very foolish.
- Madame Rita Cavallini: To me, love is only a little warmth in all this cold. Just a little light in all this darkness. One little minute to lie still in the beloved's arms. One little minute to forget. And that's all.
- Tom Armstrong: Then it is true!
- Madame Rita Cavallini: Oh-no-no.
- Tom Armstrong: Will you swear it!
- Madame Rita Cavallini: Why, yes.
- Tom Armstrong: Then, put your hand on my mother's testament.
- [last lines]
- Tom Armstrong: If you love her, and she loves you, don't let your mother or anybody else in the world come between you. Don't lose it, my boy. It's the greatest thing in the world... romance.