Capt. Danette: [sarcastically, after watching Joe drink] Careful. Some of the wine is getting in your mouth.
Benjamin Trane: Do you got a soft spot for an innocent man?
Joe Erin: No such thing as an innocent man!


--Burt Lancaster (as Joe Erin) in Vera Cruz

Lady Matheson: [Reprovingly, talking about Sybil] I'm surprised at you, Mr. Malcolm. You should not have brought her into it.
John Malcolm: I suppose not. I thought I might get her once, just this once in her whole life, to publicly disagree with her mother. It'd save her soul if she ever did.


--Burt Lancaster (as John Malcolm) in Separate Tables

Jake Sharp: Mr. D, whatever got a loving man like you in the dynamite business?
Bill Dolworth: Well, I'll tell you. I was born with a powerful passion to create. I can't write, can't paint, can't make up a song...
Hans Ehrengard: So you explode things.
Bill Dolworth: Well that's how the world was born. Biggest damn explosion you ever saw.


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals

Jake Sharp: We could all do with a rest.
Hans Ehrengard: A shave would be a relief, too.
Jake Sharp: So would a bath.
Bill Dolworth: Might as well throw in a woman. Any size, any age, any color. Any woman.


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals

Col. Hickman: You are aware that you face a possible sentence of death, not to mention a total imprisonment of...
[he checks some papers]
Col. Hickman: ... 143 years?
Master Gunnery Sgt. James O'Hearn: The last 100 won't hurt, sir.


--Burt Lancaster (as Master Gunnery Sgt. James O'Hearn) in South Sea Woman

Jesus Raza: You know, of course, one of us must die.
Bill Dolworth: Maybe both of us.
Jesus Raza: To die for money... is foolish.
Bill Dolworth: To die for a woman is *more* foolish. Any woman. Even her.


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals

Toady: Consider the diamond itself for instance. Carbon, soot, chemically speaking. And yet the hardest of all matters. So hard, in fact, that whatever it touches must suffer: glass, steel, the human soul.
Mike Davis: Why don't you sell your rug someplace else?


--Burt Lancaster (as Mike Davis) in Rope of Sand

Bill Dolworth: [examining an arrow] Makes you wonder how we ever beat the Indians.


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals

Bill Dolworth: Maybe there's only one revolution, since the beginning, the good guys against the bad guys. Question is, who are the good guys?


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals

Bill Dolworth: Men on that train are Colorados. Expert marksmen. Also expert at torture. Couple o' years ago they burned and looted a town of three thousand people. When they finished, forty were left. Fardan's wife was one o' the lucky forty. "Why're you a revolutionary?" they asked her. "To rid the world of scum like you," she said. They stripped her naked, ran 'er through the cactus 'til her flesh was - The other thirty-nine rebels watched her die, and - did nothing. Just watched.


--Burt Lancaster (as Bill Dolworth) in The Professionals