Beautiful detachment and stern justice

We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to be questioned and shot. So far they had shot every one they had questioned. The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Abstract words...were obscene

   "We won't talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain."
   I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Three doctors

   Before he came back three doctors came into the room. I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend to you a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success. These were three such doctors.

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Gesta Romantorum by firelight

   The boys, and for that matter the men, would sit as quiet as church mice while the marvels of the story were unfolded, and, when the unpredictable narrative had come to an end, they would look towards Reverend Sidebottom [...] to have the story explained. Reverend Sidebottom would draw a deep breath and plunge into his task, explaining how the certain King was really Christ, and the barking dogs zealous preachers, or how the white cow was the soul and her milk represented prayer and supplication. Sometimes, indeed generally, the unfortunate vicar was hard put to it to find a moral, but nobody ever doubted that his explanations were the right ones; and anyway most of his listeners were soon asleep.

T. H. White
The Sword In The Stone (1939)

The dog boy and the dogs

He talked to them, not in baby-talk like a maiden lady, but correctly in their own growls and barks. They all loved him very much, and revered him for taking thorns out of their toes, and came to him with their little troubles at once. He always understood immediately what was wrong, and generally he could put it right. It was nice for the dogs to have their god with them, in visible form.

T. H. White

The Sword In The Stone (1939)

Like a decade?

"I am here because this is a young and virile race, not dry and decadent like ours."

Dracula (Lon Chaney, Jr.)
Son of Dracula (1943)

He pronounces it /duh-KADE-nt/.

Laconic grunts, indeed

   "Going huntin', mister?"
   You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "Hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.
   Bond, slinging the strap of his rifle over his shoulder, said, "Hun."

Ian Fleming
"For Your Eyes Only" (1959)

Self-pity and freedom

   Where did the self-pity come from? The inordinate volume of it? By almost any standard, she led a luxurious life. She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free.

Johnathan Franzen
Freedom (2010)

Not seriously

   It was one of those leather-padded bars, bogus-masculine, and still, because of its newness, smelling like the inside of a new motor-car. It was made to look like a Tyrolean Stube by a big stone fire-place with a roaring log fire and cartwheel chandeliers with red-stemmed electric "candles." There were many wrought-iron gimmicks -- wall-light brackets, ashtrays, table lamps -- and the bar itself was "gay" with small flags and miniature liquor bottles. Attractive zither music tripped out from a hidden loud speaker. It was not, Bond decided, a place to get seriously drunk in.

Ian Fleming
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)

Ok, I'll bite

"You know what? said Major Dexter Smythe to the octopus.

Ian Fleming
"Octopussy" (1965)

That's tellin' him

All right. You're askin' for trouble. And you're gonna get it too. And don't you forget it, either.

The Cisco Kid TV series
"Rustling" (1950)
Season 1, Episode 3
screenplay: J. Benton Cheney

The French

The French took great pride in their arrangements for the signing of the peace treaty. The event was to be an exercise of two qualities at which they excelled -- grandeur and revenge.

John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Woodrow Wilson - A Biography (2009)

When you come to a conclusion, jump

Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits -- barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.

Ian Fleming
Goldfinger (1959)

Tempus non fugit

"I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime."

Shirley Jackson
Life Among The Savages (1953)

Here's chloral hydrate in your eye

"To your health. And may our enemies -- if they exist -- be unconscious of our purpose."

Dr. Hartz (Paul Lukas)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
written by
Ethel Lina White (story)
Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (screenplay)

Chivalry

"My father always taught me: Never desert a lady in trouble. He even carried that as far as marrying Mother."

Gilbert (Michael Redgrave)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
written by
Ethel Lina White (story)
Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (screenplay)