General Count von Klugermann: Stachel. I want him brought to Berlin immediately.
Holbach: Yes, Herr General.
General Count von Klugermann: There is some difficulty?
Holbach: Well, I don't know what you have in mind, Herr General, but, uh, with the offensive at its height, well, there'd have to be some legitimate excuse to order him to come.
General Count von Klugermann: He's wounded, isn't he?
Holbach: Yes, Herr General.
General Count von Klugermann: Hmm. A mentionable wound?
Holbach: Uh, in the arm.
General Count von Klugermann: Good. The people like soldiers who were shot in the right places. Order Stachel to Berlin for special hospital treatment. I want you to ensure that all our newspapers give full prominence to this gallant episode - photographs, everything.


--James Mason (as ) in The Blue Max

General Count von Klugermann: Take a look outside. See that? Revolution is just beneath the surface! If that happens, everything we stand for will be DESTROYED - unless the German officer corps stands like a rock, intact! And what is more important, untarnished. I made this Stachel into a national hero for good military reasons. If I court-martial him now, it will reflect on the integrity of the whole officer corps.
Otto Heidemann: Herr General, I see now, I have notions of honor which are outdated.
General Count von Klugermann: Ahh, they're not outdated!
[pause]
General Count von Klugermann: Stored. With care, and love, for better times.


--James Mason (as ) in The Blue Max

Gentleman Brown: [on Jim] His Lordship has pretensions to heroism - a form of mental disease induced by vanity.


--James Mason (as Gentleman Brown) in Lord Jim

Gentleman Brown: [to Cornelius] You have a natural talent for disaster! Try and improve yourself into an ordinary failure by keeping your mouth shut.


--James Mason (as Gentleman Brown) in Lord Jim

Gustave Flaubert: [at his trial] To declare that men have absolute power over truth is blasphemy, and the last delusion. Truth lives forever, men do not.


--James Mason (as Gustave Flaubert) in Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert: Could it have been otherwise? She had wept no doubt in the early morning hours. Was Emma the first bride to weep while the bridegroom slept? Or the last? Tristan, Lancelot, love in a Scotch cottage, love in a Swiss chalet...


--James Mason (as Gustave Flaubert) in Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert: Forgiveness is still, as I understand it, among the Christian sentiments.


--James Mason (as Gustave Flaubert) in Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert: She had learned to be a woman for whom experience would always be a prison, and freedom would lie always beyond the horizon.


--James Mason (as Gustave Flaubert) in Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert: There are those who are offended by her, and who see in Emma Bovary's life an attack upon public morality. Gentlemen of the court, I maintain that there is truth in her story, and that a morality which has within it no room for truth is no morality at all. Men may dislike truth. Men may find truth offensive and inconvenient. Men may persecute the truth, subvert it, try by law to suppress it. But to maintain that men have the final power over truth is blasphemy and the last illusion. Truth lives forever. Men do not.


--James Mason (as Gustave Flaubert) in Madame Bovary

Hendrik: [after saying there is no such thing as a faithful woman] If this be folly, and upon me proved, then let the Divinity which I reject, make what sport He will of my immortal soul!


--James Mason (as Hendrik van der Zee) in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman