Joan Blandings: Miss Stellwagon says advertising is a basically parasitic profession.
Jim Blandings: You don't say?
Joan Blandings: Miss Stellwagon says advertising makes people who can't afford it, buy things they don't want, with money they haven't got.
Jim Blandings: Oh she does, does she? Well perhaps your Miss Stellwagon is right. Perhaps I should quit this basically parasitic profession, which at the very moment is paying for your fancy tuition and those extra French lessons and that progressive summer camp - to say nothing of the very braces on your back teeth.

Mr. Tesander: Mr. Blandings, there's a matter of $12.36.
Jim Blandings: $12.36?!? Why be a pika Mr. Tesander? Here! Take everything I've got! Spread it out amongst your pals. Perhaps Retch would like a little something! Maybe Zucca could use a new smoking jacket! It's open house Mr. Tesander -- help yourself!

Jim Blandings: $7,000? I wouldn't put seven cents into this broken down rat trap.
Muriel Blandings: Jim, how can you talk that way? This is our home. Betsy was practically born in this apartment.
Jim Blandings: That does not make it a national shrine!

Jim Blandings: Anybody who builds a house today is crazy. The minute you start, they put you on the list -- the all-American sucker list! You start out to build a home and you wind up in the poor house! And if it can happen to me, what about the fellows who aren't making $15,000 a year? What about the kids who just got married and want a home of their own? It's a conspiracy I tell you -- a conspiracy against every boy and girl who were ever in love!

Jim Blandings: For 15 years I've been couped up in a 4-room cracker box. Just getting showered in the morning entitles a man to the Purple Heart.

Jim Blandings: I mean the moment I turn my back, Bill Cole's driving you someplace or something.
Muriel Blandings: He's only being helpful.
Jim Blandings: I thought he was a lawyer. Why isn't he out suing somebody?

Jim Blandings: If you were so crazy about him, why didn't you marry the guy?
Muriel Blandings: Because I wasn't in love with him.Jim Blandings: That's not what you said in your diary!
Muriel Blandings: Oh, now you've been reading my diary?!?
Jim Blandings: Well, it just happened to fall open and I happened to look at it... it just happened.
Muriel Blandings: I'll just bet!

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Jim Blandings: It's like a fine painting. You buy it with your heart, not your head. You don't ask 'how much was the paint,' 'how much was the canvas.' You look at it and you say 'it's beautiful -- I want it.' And if it costs a few more pennies, you pay it -- and gladly -- because you love it. And you can't measure the things you love in dollars and cents!

Jim Blandings: Look, you can't measure everything on a slide rule. This house has certain intangibles.
Bill Cole: Like what for instance?
Jim Blandings: Like antique value for instance. It just so happens that General, um, Gates stopped right there, that very house, to water his horses.
Bill Cole: I don't care if General Grant stopped in for a scotch and sode. You're still getting rooked.

Jim Blandings: Muriel, would it do any good to say I'm sorry?
Muriel Blandings: I don't know.
Jim Blandings: Well I am. I've behaved like a school boy and I'm sorry.