- Archduke Rudolf: Last night at the Court ball, a dark Polish woman, the only one there of interest to me, I asked you to present her. Later I found out that I had already been to bed with her.
- Archduke Rudolf: I've tried travel, I've tried politics, gambling, drink, I don't fancy young men. So, what's left?
- Maria Vetsera: [pointing towards a skull on Rudolph's desk] I don't care for that.
- Archduke Rudolf: My cousin Ludwig gave it to me. It'd comfort me, he said, for being alive.
- Maria Vetsera: Ludwig? You mean, King Ludwig of Bavaria? The one who...?
- Archduke Rudolf: Lies! These stories are all lies! He was just... strange. He was not insane. Nobody knows for sure how he died.
- Inspector Losch: Papers.
- Archduke Rudolf: I haven't any.
- Archduke Rudolf: Your name, then.
- Archduke Rudolf: Rudolph.
- Inspector Losch: Rudolph what?
- Archduke Rudolf: Take your choice: Rudolph, Franz, Charles.
- Inspector Losch: And no papers? You're going to be lucky, my little humorist, if you...
- [looks up, then slowly rises to his feet]
- Inspector Losch: Your Royal Highness! You will forgive me?
- Archduke Rudolf: I will forgive you, naturally. And you, in return, will forgive these, these friends of mine and release them at once.
- Empress Elizabeth: And my granddaughter? I hate that word too.
- Archduke Rudolf: Oh! She's enchanting. Luckily she takes after neither of her parents.
- Empress Elizabeth: Perhaps, a melancholy temperament can skip a generation. Like insanity.
- Archduke Rudolf: In this family that could not have been meant as a joke. Not in this family. Never.
- Prince of Wales: Incidentally, why are there always red carpets?
- Archduke Rudolf: Stations make great places for assassinations. On the red carpet, the blood doesn't show.
- Archduke Rudolf: I see only one advantage in providing our army with out-of-date maps: if they fall into the hands of our enemies, they mislead them too.
- Empress Elizabeth: Do you know what he said to me the day he was married? "Mother, say a prayer for me." And I said "what prayer shall I make for you?" And he said "Pray to God that I should never fall in love."
- Archduke Rudolf: Where can I go? What shall I do?
- Prince of Wales: You'll do the same thing as I shall do one day or another.
- Archduke Rudolf: What's that?
- Prince of Wales: Go back to my wife.
- Emperor Franz-Josef: Rudolph, what is this wall between us?
- Archduke Rudolf: You should know, you built it. You tear it down, Father.
- Archduke Rudolf: [to Maria Vetsera] Maria Vetsera of the sleep and snow, I think I love you. Very much.