- Sebastian Flyte: I asked too much of you. I knew it all along, really. Only God can give you that sort of love.
- [first lines]
- Charles Ryder: [internal monologue] If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name: Charles Ryder. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thought, one emotion remains my own. Alone among the borrowed and the second-hand, as pure as that faith from which I am still in flight: Guilt.
- Boy Markaster: What do you want to be an artist for? I mean, what's the point of it? Why don't you just buy a bloody camera and take a bloody photograph and stop giving yourself airs? That's what I want to know.
- Charles Ryder: I don't give myself airs.
- Boy Markaster: Uh, yes, you do. And anyway you haven't answered my question. Come on! Answer! Answer! Answer!
- Charles Ryder: Because, a camera is a mechanical device which records a moment in time, but not what that moment means or the emotions that it evokes. Whereas, a painting, however imperfect it may be, is an expression of... feeling. An expression of love. Not just a copy of something.
- Lady Marchmain: I act only as God directs.
- Charles Ryder: Rubbish. God's your best invention. Whatever you want, he does.
- Sebastian Flyte: [sitting under an oak with Charles Ryder] Just the place to bury a crock of gold. I should like to bury something precious, in every place I've been happy. And then when I was old, and ugly and miserable, I could come back, and dig it up, and remember.
- Sebastian Flyte: It was my fault for bringing you to Brideshead. Run away. Run far away and don't ever look back.
- Sebastian Flyte: Charles is reading history, but he wants to be an artist.
- Anthony Blanche: No!
- Sebastian Flyte: Why ever not?
- Anthony Blanche: Either you are an artist, or you are not.
- Boy Markaster: Hear, hear.
- Charles Ryder: Then I am.
- Sebastian Flyte: Charles! You're to come away at once. I've got a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey, which isn't a wine you've ever tasted so don't pretend.
- Sebastian Flyte: It's rather a pleasant change... when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after, yourself.
- Cara: That woman nearly suffocated him... Well, just look at her children. Even when they were tiny, in the nursery, they must do what she wants them to do, be what she wants them to be. Only then would she love them. It's not Lady Marchmain's fault. Her God has done that to her.
- Charles Ryder: But surely you're Catholic too.
- Cara: Oh, yes, but a different sort. Well, it's different in Italy. Not so much guilt. We do what the heart tell us, and then we go to confession.
- Lady Marchmain: Happiness in this life is irrelevant. All that matters, the only thing of consequence, is the life hereafter.
- Charles Ryder: [internal monologue] Did I want too much? Did my own hunger blind me to the ties that bound them to their faith? Am I only now, shadowed by war, all moorings gone, alone enough to see the night?
- [last lines]
- Hooper: It's our time now, just watch. The old ways, all this, they're gone. The future belongs to us, as long as we don't get shot. How about you, sir? Have you got someone special waiting for you?
- Charles Ryder: Me? No. I have lost and loved for more than one lifetime.
- Hooper: Would you like me to drive you back, sir?
- Charles Ryder: No, not yet. Carry on, Hooper.
- Hooper: Very well, sir.