Captain Arthur Keller: From the minute she stepped off the train she's been nothing but a burden! Incompetent, impertinent, ineffectual, inmodest, and...
Kate Keller: She folded her napkin, Captain.
Captain Arthur Keller: She what?
Kate Keller: Not ineffectual. Helen did fold her napkin.
Captain Arthur Keller: What in heaven's name is so extraordinary about folding a napkin?
Kate Keller: Well, it's more than you did, Captain.
Captain Arthur Keller: Katie, the point is she's ruined any chance she ever had of getting along with the child. If you can see any point or purpose of her staying on here longer, it's more than I can.
Kate Keller: What do you wish me to do?
Captain Arthur Keller: I want you to give her notice!
Kate Keller: I can't.
Captain Arthur Keller: Then if you won't, I must!

Captain Arthur Keller: Miss Sullivan, I find it difficult to talk through those glasses. Why do you wear them? The sun's been down over an hour.
Annie Sullivan: Any kind of light hurts my eyes.
Captain Arthur Keller: Well, put them on, Miss Sullivan. I've decided to give you a second chance.
Annie Sullivan: To do what?
Captain Arthur Keller: To remain our employee! But on two conditions! I'm not accustomed to rudeness! If you want to stay, there must be a radical change of manner!
Annie Sullivan: Whose?
Captain Arthur Keller: Yours, young lady! Isn't it obvious? You must convice me that there's the slightest hope of you teaching a child who now flees from you like the plague.
Annie Sullivan: There isn't. It's hopeless here.
Captain Arthur Keller: Am I to understand...
Annie Sullivan: We all agree it's hopeless here. The next question is...
Kate Keller: Miss Annie, I'm not agreed! She did fold her napkin. She learns. She learns! Did you know she began talking when she was only six months old? She could say water. Well, not really. Wah-wah. But she meant water! She knew what it meant at only six months old! I never saw a child so bright or outgoing! It's still in her, somewhere. Miss Annie, put up with her and with us.
Captain Arthur Keller: Us?
Kate Keller: Please. Like the lost lamb in the parable, I love her all the more.
Annie Sullivan: Mrs. Keller, I don't think Helen's greatest handicap is deafness or blindness. I think it's your love and pity. All these years you've felt so sorry for her you've kept her like a pet. Well, even a dog you housebreak.

Captain Arthur Keller: What would another week accomplish? We are more than satisfied. You taught her things to do, how to behave. She's more manageable, cleaner.
Annie Sullivan: Cleaner?
Captain Arthur Keller: Well, we say cleanliness is next to godliness.
Annie Sullivan: Cleanliness is next to nothing! Give me more time with her.
Captain Arthur Keller: Look, what's she spelling? Teaching a dog to spell? The dog doesn't know what she means any more than she knows what you mean, Miss Sullivan. I think you ask too much of her and yourself. God may not have meant Helen to have the eyes you speak of.
Annie Sullivan: I mean her to.

James Keller: Finding out if she's ticklish? She is. What is it, a game?
Annie Sullivan: An alphabet.
James Keller: Alphabet?
Annie Sullivan: [finger-spelling to Helen] For the deaf.
Annie Sullivan: [after Helen finger-spells back to her] Oh, how bright she is!
James Keller: You think she knows what she's doing? She's a monkey. She imitates everything.
Annie Sullivan: Yes, she's a bright little monkey, all right!
James Keller: She wants her doll back.
Annie Sullivan: After she spells it.
James Keller: Spells? She doesn't know the thing has a name, even.
Annie Sullivan: Of course not. Who expects her to now? I just want her fingers to learn the letters.
James Keller: She doesn't seem to like that alphabet very much, Miss Sullivan. Did you invent it yourself?
Annie Sullivan: Spanish monks under a vow of silence, which I wish you'd take!

James Keller: How old was he, your brother Jimmy?
Annie Sullivan: Helen's age.
James Keller: How did he die?
Annie Sullivan: He had a tubercular hip. We made quite a pair, me blind and him with his crutch.
James Keller: When did he die?
Annie Sullivan: Eleven years ago this May.
James Keller: And you've had no one to dream about since?
Annie Sullivan: No, one's enough.
James Keller: You don't let go of things easily, do you? You'd be quite a handsome girl if it weren't for your eyes. No one's told you?
Annie Sullivan: Everyone. You'd be quite a gentleman if it weren't for your manners.
James Keller: You wouldn't say that if you didn't have your glasses on. How will you win her hand now, in this place?
Annie Sullivan: I don't know. I lost my temper, and here we are. I'm counting on her. That little head is dying to know.

James Keller: Miss Sullivan? I'm James Keller.
Annie Sullivan: James? I had a brother Jimmy. Are you Helen's?
James Keller: I'm only half a brother. You'll be her governess?
Annie Sullivan: Well, I'll try.
James Keller: You look like half a governess.

James Keller: Sooner or later, we all give up, don't we?
Annie Sullivan: Maybe you all do, but it's my idea of the original sin.
James Keller: What is?
Annie Sullivan: Giving up!

Kate Keller: What are you saying to her?
Annie Sullivan: Oh, I was just making conversation. Telling her it was a sewing card.
Kate Keller: Does that mean that to her?
Annie Sullivan: Oh, no, she won't know what spelling is till she knows what a word is.
Kate Keller: The captain says it's like spelling to a fence post.
Annie Sullivan: Does he now? It's how I watch you talk to your baby.
Kate Keller: The baby?
Annie Sullivan: Any baby. It's gibberish. Grown-up gibberish. Baby-talk gibberish. Do they understand one word of it to start? Somehow they begin to if they hear it. I'm letting Helen hear it.
Kate Keller: Other children are not impaired.
Annie Sullivan: Oh, there's nothing impaired in her head. It works like a mousetrap.
Kate Keller: Then when will she learn?
Annie Sullivan: Maybe after a million words.

Annie Sullivan: [after a breakthrough with Helen] Now all I have to teach you is one word - everything.

Annie Sullivan: All's fair in love and war.
Captain Arthur Keller: This is not war.
Annie Sullivan: Well, it's not love!