Mattie Ross: Now I know you can drink whiskey and I saw you kill a rat, but all the rest has been talk. I'm not paying for talk. I can get all the talk I need at the Monarch Boarding House.
Rooster Cogburn: I ought to paddle your rump!
Mattie Ross: I don't know how you propose to do that from that hog wallow you're sunk into. If I smelled as bad as you I wouldn't live near people.

Mattie Ross: Now I'm sure you'll find a buyer for those ponies very soon.
Col. G. Stonehill: I have a tentative offer of ten dollars a head from the soapworks at Little Rock.
Mattie Ross: It seems such a shame to render such spirited horseflesh into soap.
Col. G. Stonehill: I'm confident the deal will fall through.

Mattie Ross: There's an old song that says: One white foot buy 'em, two white feet try 'em, three white feet be on the sly, four white feet pass 'em by.

Mattie Ross: Trust you to buy another tall horse.
Rooster Cogburn: Yeah. He's not as game as Beau, but Stonehill says he can jump a four rail fence.
Mattie Ross: You are too old and fat to be jumping horses.
Rooster Cogburn: Well, come see a fat old man some time!
[jumps the fence and rides away]

Mattie Ross: Who's the best marshal they have?
Sheriff: Bill Waters is the best tracker. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn, a pitiless man, double tough, fear don't enter into his thinking. I'd have to say L.T. Quinn is the straightest, he brings his prisoners in alive.
Mattie Ross: Where would I find this Rooster?
Sheriff: He'll be at the federal court this afternoon, he's bringing in a load of prisoners from the territories.

Mattie Ross: You never told me you had a wife.
Rooster Cogburn: Oh, well, I didn't have her long. My friends was a pack of river rats and she didn't crave their society so she up and left me and went back to her first husband who was clerkin' in a hardware store in Paducah. "Goodbye, Reuben," she says, "the love of decency does not abide in you!" That's a dee-vorced woman talkin' for you, about decency. Well, I told her. I said, "Goodbye, Nola, and I hope that nail-sellin' bastard makes you happy this time!"
Mattie Ross: Did you have any children?
Rooster Cogburn: There was a boy. Nola taken him with her. He never liked me anyway. A clumsier child you'll never see than Horace; I bet he broke 40 cup.

[after LaBoeuf pulls Rooster and Mattie from the snake pit, he collapses off his horse; they go to him but it's too late]
Rooster Cogburn: Texican... saved my neck twice. Once after he was dead.

[at the camp, Mattie tastes the water]
Mattie Ross: That tastes like iron.
LaBoeuf: You're lucky to be where water's so handy. I've seen the time I've drank out of a filthy hoofprint - and was glad to get it.
Rooster Cogburn: If ever I meet one of you Texas waddies who ain't drunk water from a hoofprint, I think I'll... I'll shake their hand or buy 'em a Daniel Webster cigar.
[points to LaBoeuf's shaggy horse]
Rooster Cogburn: How long you boys down there been mounted on sheep?

[Col. Stonehill is frustrated at Mattie's bargaining]
Col. G. Stonehill: I will pay a total of two hundred dollars to your father's estate when I have in my hand a letter absolving me of all liability from the beginning of the world to date!

[first lines]
Frank Ross: Little Frank... You take care of your mama.
Little Frank: I will.