Anne Crandall: [Defending her life] It's comfortable
Jonathan Crandall Sr: You're too young to be comfortable.
Anne Crandall: I have, you, you miserable old reprobate!
Jonathan Crandall Sr: I can think of a couple of things you haven't got.
Anne Crandall: What?
Jonathan Crandall Sr: Well, tou're a widow!
Anne Crandall: Yes?
Jonathan Crandall Sr: And, uh, don't be so darn difficult.


--Charles Coburn (as ) in Together Again

Ella Sue Dozier: Then you're not discouraged, Colonel?
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: Discouragement has no more place in a soldier's equipment than an inner-spring mattress.


--Charles Coburn (as Col. Will Seaborn Effingham) in Colonel Effingham's Raid

Burton F. 'B.F.' Fulton: [to Polly] It's just that I want you to know that lots of marriages... well, aren't the way they say in books... but still they're worth fighting for.


--Charles Coburn (as Burton F. 'B.F.' Fulton) in B.F.'s Daughter

Burton F. 'B.F.' Fulton: My money seems to have done you a lot of harm. I didn't mean it that way. I earned it for you... but for your happiness.
Pauline 'Polly' Fulton Brett: Oh, please, Darling.
Burton F. 'B.F.' Fulton: Polly, times are changing. I haven't wanted them too. A lot of people think that everything should be different, and they're quite honest about ut, but I can't agree with them. I've been a builder, and the world needs builders - planners too, but builders, always builders.


--Charles Coburn (as Burton F. 'B.F.' Fulton) in B.F.'s Daughter

Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: I don't see why our biggest and most important project... the administration of government... should be handed over - lock, stock and barrel - to a bunch of incompetents!


--Charles Coburn (as Col. Will Seaborn Effingham) in Colonel Effingham's Raid

Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: My people have always been soldiers. My grandfather fell at Chickamauga; his grandfather at Saratoga. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter, my own father, unfortunately was only nine.
Earl Hoats: That WAS a little YOUNG.
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: I, myself, was wounded at San Juan Hill. I was at the seige of Panama. For fifty years, mister editor, the forces of civilization had been held at bay on the Isthmus... unable to join the waters of two great oceans. And do you know what blocked them? Gatling guns? Mini-balls? Superior forces? Guerilla bands?
[shakes his head "no]
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: Mosquitoes.
Earl Hoats: Well, perhaps one of my boys could fix up a little story for Sunday...
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: Stegomyia faciata.
[scientific name of mosquito]
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: For half a century, the enemy - less than a quarter of an inch in stature - blocked the economic march of a nation of a hundred million people. It was insupportable.
Earl Hoats: Well, Colonel...
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: We blockaded General Stegomyia, to wit: the mosquito. We cut him off from reinforcements. We hammered his communications.
Earl Hoats: So you're back in Fredericksville for good, now, Colonel?
Col. Will Seaborn Effingham: We sprayed his concentrations with oil. We screened his wells. We put fifth columns of fish in the water to attack his ammunition dumps. But, more of that another day.


--Charles Coburn (as Col. Will Seaborn Effingham) in Colonel Effingham's Raid

Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: In the 13th Century, man was happier and more comfortable in his world than he is now. I'm speaking of psychic man and his relationship with his whole universe.
Parris Mitchell: I get it, sir. Everything was so simple then
Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: That was it, Parris. That was it. But in this modern complicated world, man breaks down under the strain, the bewilderment, disappointment, and disillusionment. He gets lost, goes crazy, commits suicide. I don't know what's going to happen to this world in the next hundred years or so, but I can guarantee you life isn't going to get any simpler. Worry and doubt bring on a bellyache. Mankind's building up the biggest psychic bellyache in history.


--Charles Coburn (as Dr. Henry Gordon) in Kings Row

Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: Oh, have you read this?
Parris Mitchell: Yes, sir. I didn't understand it entirely, I'm afraid.
Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: Well, it's a new field. They've even a new word for it: psychiatry.
Parris Mitchell: It's something I never thought about. I mean, for a doctor to want to cure diseases of people's minds instead of their bodies. I suppose it's a pretty big field, sir.
Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: Maybe too big. Maybe a hundred years off.


--Charles Coburn (as Dr. Henry Gordon) in Kings Row

Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: Well, a little loneliness won't hurt you to speak of... you get used to it.


--Charles Coburn (as Dr. Henry Gordon) in Kings Row

Dr. Alexander Q. Tower: Well, Mitchell, I don't know at all your approach to medicine. Perhaps you regard it as an opportunity to become one of those bedside manners with a list of proper pills to give the patient - particularly when you don't know what is the matter with him. Or perhaps your aim is to become an eminent carpenter with a knife and a chisel and a saw. Perhaps even you'll flow over with the nobility of relieving humanity's suffering. I'll tell you my approach to medicine! It is a game in which man pits his brains against the forces of destruction and disease. In the beginning I don't expect you to participate in the game. You'll only listen and accept. You will study and you will make notes and you will memorize... and you will do all this only because I tell you to.


--Charles Coburn (as Dr. Henry Gordon) in Kings Row