- Frank Gibbons: What's the use of upsetting yourself? There isn't going to be another war anyway.
- Ethel Gibbons: There'll always be wars as long as men are such fools as to want to go to them.
- Frank Gibbons: [putting down the newspaper] Well, they're cutting down the navy, and they're cutting down the army. The only thing they don't seem to be cutting down is the unemployed!
- Frank Gibbons: [at the Wembley exhibition] I brought them here to see the glories of Empire, and all they think about is going on the dodgems...
- Frank Gibbons: Poor old girl. You must be glad to have a 'ome of your own again. Living with your mother for four years can't have been all jam, I will say. I think I was better off in the trenches.
- Ethel Gibbons: You ought to be ashamed saying such things!
- Frank Gibbons: Your mother's alright in her way, but that house of hers in Battersea, oh dear. Gave me the willies after five weeks, let alone four years. At least we've got a bath here that doesn't scratch the hide off you.
- Frank Gibbons: Somebody once said we was a nation of gardeners, you know they weren't far wrong. We like planting things and watching 'em grow, looking out for changes in the weather.
- Ethel Gibbons: You and your garden.
- Frank Gibbons: What works in other countries won't work in this one. We got our own way of settlin' things. It may be a bit slow and it may be a bit dull, but it suits us all right and it always will.
- Ethel Gibbons: He's our only son, isn't he? He's going away from us, isn't he? It's enough to make any woman cry.
- Frank Gibbons: Well, they'll be back from the honeymoon in two weeks and living just round the corner.
- Ethel Gibbons: It's all very fine for you. You didn't bring him into the world and hold him at your breast.
- Frank Gibbons: I should have looked the proper fool if I had!
- Frank Gibbons: Marriage is a bit different, you know, from just having a bit of fun.
- Reg: Yes, I expect it is.
- Frank Gibbons: Women aren't all the same, you know, not by any manner of means. Some of them don't care what happens so long as they have a good time. Marriage isn't important to them - beyond having the ring and being Mrs. Whatever-it-is. But your mother wasn't that sort and I don't think Phyllis is either. She's a nice girl and she loves you a lot.
- Reg: I know, Dad.
- Frank Gibbons: And when a woman loves a man that much she's, uh, apt to be a bit oversensitive, you know. It's well to remember that.
- Reg: I'll remember that, Dad.
- Frank Gibbons: Just you go carefully. Be gentle. You got a long time together - all your lives, I hope, and it's worthwhile to go easy and get to know each other gradual.
- Frank Gibbons: We are as we are, and that's how we're going to stay and if you don't like it, well, you can lump it. But one of these days, when you know a bit more, you'll find out that there are worse things than being just ordinary and respectable and living the way you've been brought up to live.
- Frank Gibbons: I belong to generation of men, most of whom aren't here any more. And we all did the same thing for the same reason no matter what we thought about politics. Now that's all over and done with and we're carrying on, the best we can, just as though nothing had happened. But as a matter of fact, several things happened, and one of 'em was, this country suddenly got tired. She's tired now. But the old lady's got stamina, make no mistake about that, and it's up to us ordinary people to keep things steady. And that's your job, and just you remember it.
- Bob Mitchell: Strike me pink, it's old Gibbo.
- Frank Gibbons: You old son of a gun!
- Bob Mitchell: Blimey. I thought you was as dead as mutton after that night attack when we'd gone on to Givenchy and left you lot in the mud.
- Frank Gibbons: What me, dead as mutton? I'm tougher than that. Only one small 'ole through me leg in four years!
- Ethel Gibbons: Poor old Sylvia, she's a bit of a trial sometimes.
- Queenie: Well, I don't know how you stand her, Mum.
- Ethel Gibbons: If it hadn't for poor Bertie getting killed in the war, she'd have been alright I expect.
- Queenie: What was he like?
- Ethel Gibbons: Bit soppy I always thought, still, she seemed to like him.
- Queenie: How awful to be so dependent on a man living or dying it could ruin your whole life.
- Sam Leadbitter: But as you well know there are millions and millions of 'omes in this country today where Christmas is naught but a mockery, where there's neither warmth nor food nor even the bare necessities of life, where little children, old before their time, huddle round a fireless grate.
- Queenie: Well, they'd be just as well off if they stayed in the middle of the room then, wouldn't they?
- Reg: Oh shut up Queenie, Sam's quite right.
- Sam Leadbitter: That sort of remark, Queenie, springs from complacency, arrogance and a full stomach.
- Queenie: You leave my stomach out of it.
- Sam Leadbitter: It is people like you, apathetic, unthinking, docile supporters of a capitalistic system which is a disgrace to civilization who are responsible for at least three quarters of the cruelest sufferings of the world. As long as you can earn your miserable little salaries and go to the pictures and enjoy yourselves, the rest of society can go hang, can't it. You're too busy getting all weepy over Rudolph Valentino to spare any tears for the workers of the world!
- Vi: Don't get excited, Sam. Queenie didn't mean it.
- Sam Leadbitter: I am not excited, and Queenie doesn't mean anything to me anyway.
- Queenie: Oh, pardon me all while I go and commit suicide.
- Frank Gibbons: Well son...
- Reg: Well Dad?
- Frank Gibbons: I suppose I ought to be giving you a few bits of fatherly advice by rights...
- Reg: What about Dad?
- Frank Gibbons: Well, there's the "facts of life" for instance...
- Reg: I could probably tell you a few things about them.
- Frank Gibbons: Yeah, I'll bet you could at that.
- Queenie: You haven't any right to ask me things like that.
- Billy Mitchell: Now listen here Queenie. We haven't seen much of each other on account of me bein' away at sea, but you've known all the time that I've been thinking of you and hoping that as the years went by you might grow out of some of your high-falutin' ideas and think me good enough to be your husband. All that gives me the right to ask anything I like.
- Queenie: No it doesn't.
- Billy Mitchell: Is there someone else or isn't there?
- Queenie: Yes there is if you want to know, so there.
- Billy Mitchell: You going to marry him?
- Queenie: No.
- Billy Mitchell: Why not?
- Queenie: That's my affair.
- Billy Mitchell: Is he married already?
- Queenie: Leave me alone!
- Billy Mitchell: Is he?
- Queenie: Yes he is! Now are you satisfied?
- Billy Mitchell: Oh Queenie. You're an awful fool. I do wish you weren't.
- Queenie: Who are you calling a fool? People can't help their feelings.
- Billy Mitchell: No, but they can have enough sense not to let their feelings get the better of them!
- Frank Gibbons: Here, let's have a look at you.
- Ethel Gibbons: What for?
- Frank Gibbons: Just to see what's happened to your face. You know, I don't seem to have had time for a really good look at it since I got back.
- Ethel Gibbons: Oh, stop it. Leave go.
- Frank Gibbons: Here, hold still a minute.
- Ethel Gibbons: Now see here, Frank Gibbons.
- Frank Gibbons: It's not such a bad face as faces go, I will say.
- Ethel Gibbons: Oh, thanks very much I'm sure.
- Frank Gibbons: Of course, it's not quite as young as it was when I married it.
- Ethel Gibbons: Leave hold of me.
- Ethel Gibbons: But taken by and large, I wouldn't change it.
- Frank Gibbons: Now, then.
- Ethel Gibbons: Now then what?
- Frank Gibbons: Give us a kiss.
- Ethel Gibbons: I'll do no such thing!
- Frank Gibbons: And why not, may I ask?
- Ethel Gibbons: We haven't got no time for fooling about and well you know it.
- Frank Gibbons: Oh, turning nasty, are we? We'll soon see about that.
- Ethel Gibbons: Frank Gibbons!
- Frank Gibbons: Shut up.
- [kiss]
- Mrs. Flint: Mrs. Willcox moved into that house in Leatherhead and before she'd been in it for three months she was in bed with rheumatic fever.
- Ethel Gibbons: That's right, dear. Look on the bright side.
- Queenie: I want too much. I'm always thinking about the kind of things I want, and they wouldn't be the kind of things you'd want me to want.
- Ethel Gibbons: We haven't got any plans. We're just going to have a jolly good time.
- Queenie: Well, are we going, or are we gonna stand here all day talking about it?
- Ethel Gibbons: Don't be saucy, Queenie.
- Billy Mitchell: I haven't done anything wrong, have I?
- Queenie: Well, I don't like being taken for granted. No girl does.
- Billy Mitchell: How do you mean, taken for granted? You can't hold hands with someone all through "Desert Love" and the next minute expect them to treat you like the Empress of Russia.
- Queenie: Don't talk so silly.
- Mrs. Flint: I'm sure I haven't said anything.
- Ethel Gibbons: Oh, yes, you have. You're always giving Sylvia sly digs about Mr. Rogers. And if he's taken a fancy to her, so much the better. She's old enough to look after herself, heaven knows. And if he murdered his wife and strangled his children and ran off to Australia with her it still wouldn't be anything to do with you, so shut up.
- Vi: Now listen, Sam Leadbitter. Reg thinks you're wonderful. He's younger than you and easily led. You've been filling him up with your rotten ideas till he can't see straight. There may be a lot of things wrong, but it's not a noisy great gasbag like you that's going to set them right. And the next time you come here on a Sunday evening and start pawing me about and saying love's the most glorious thing in the world for rich and poor alike you're going to get such a smack in the face you'll wish you'd never been born.
- Mrs. Flint: I'm an old woman, and the sooner I'm dead the better. I know you're all itching to see me in me coffin.
- Frank Gibbons: Put your wife first always. Anything that's liable to bust up your home and your life with your wife and your kids - Well, it's just not worth it. You remember that and you won't go far wrong.
- Frank Gibbons: Well, uh, would you say, taken by and large that you've been a good boy on the whole since you've grown up?
- Reg: Depends on what you mean by good.
- Frank Gibbons: A few years ago we had Reg nagging at us because we were living on the fat of the land while the poor workers were starving. Now we have Queenie turning on us because we're not grand enough for her.
- Frank Gibbons: Have you come to see Queenie?
- Billy Mitchell: Well as a matter of fact, I thought that Reg might...
- Frank Gibbons: You'll find her in the living room.
- Frank Gibbons: Ernie must be getting quite a big boy now.
- Edie: 'E's turned 16. But you'd never think it. 'E's short, like Dad, you know.
- Frank Gibbons: Oh. I see.
- Edie: 'E's started tryin' to shave hisself with Dad's razor. You'd 'ave died 'o laughin' if you'd've seen 'im!
- Frank Gibbons: Did he cut himself?
- Edie: Not badly - just took the top of one or two spots...
- Mrs. Flint: On my wedding day there was a thunderstorm and a man got struck by lightning just outside the church!
- Billy Mitchell: If in two or three years' time, when I've worked my way up a bit, Queenie and me got married, would you mind?
- Frank Gibbons: Well, if Queenie wanted it it, it wouldn't matter if I minded or not, you know - she'd get her own way, she always does...
- Aunt Sylvia: She's nothing but an annoying, mischief-making old cat. If I have any more of it, old as she is, I'll slap her face until her teeth rattle.
- Mrs. Flint: I suppose you didn't think to remember my peppermints.
- Aunt Sylvia: Yes, I did. In my bag. Here.
- Mrs. Flint: Well, thank heaven for small mercies.
- Ethel Gibbons: it's wrong, isn't it? All this "down with everything" business?
- Frank Gibbons: Well, there's something to be said for it. There's always something to be said for everything. But where they go wrong is trying to get things done too quickly. We don't like doing things quickly in this country.
- Queenie: I'll tell you something awful. I hate living here. I hate living in a house that's exactly like hundreds of other houses. I hate coming home from work on tube. I hate washing up and helping Mum darn Dad's socks and listening to Aunt Syl keeping on about how ill she is all the time. And what's more, I know why I hate it. It's because it's all so common. There. I suppose you'll think I'm getting above myself and I can't blame you. Maybe I am. But I can't help it.
- Frank Gibbons: What's the betting they haven't been smoking themselves silly up in Reg's room?
- Ethel Gibbons: Well, it is Christmas.
- Ethel Gibbons: You'll stay and have a bite with us, won't you, Bob?
- Bob Mitchell: No, thank you, all the same, Nora's got something for me next door.
- Frank Gibbons: Here, have a drink.
- Ethel Gibbons: You've had quite enough to drink, Frank, and well you know it.
- Bob Mitchell: Better not, old man. Ethel's quite right. Women are always right. That's why we cherish them. God bless 'em.
- Ethel Gibbons: You'd better cherish yourself next door, Bob. Nora will be having one of her upsets if she's got something hot for you to eat and you're not there to eat it.
- Aunt Sylvia: I'll take my tea up with me.
- Ethel Gibbons: That's right, dear. Nothing like a nice cup of tea in bed.
- Frank Gibbons: Son, I belong to a generation of men, most of whom aren't here anymore and we all did the same thing for the same reason, no matter what we thought about politics. That's all over and done with, and we're carrying on the best we can - just as though nothing had happened. But as a matter of fact, several things happened and one of them was that this country suddenly got tired. She's tired now, but the Old Lady's got stamina, don't you make any mistake about that. And it's up to us ordinary people to keep things steady. That's your job, and just you remember it.
- Bob Mitchell: I say it's a bit posh going to the South of France for honeymoon, n'est-ce pas?
- Frank Gibbons: Uh, oui, oui.
- Frank Gibbons: Well, they're cutting down the navy and they're cutting down the army. The only thing they don't seem to be cutting down is the unemployed.
- Aunt Sylvia: I tell you, I'm sick of it! Morning, noon and night it's the same thing! She's at me all the time, and I won't stand it. I've got as much right to be in this house as she has. Just because she's old and pretends her heart's weak, she thinks she can say what she likes. I tell you one thing here and now, and that is I've had enough trouble and sorrow and suffering in my life without having to put up with her eternal, nagging and nasty insinuations! She's nothing but a spiteful, mischief-making, old cat! If I have any more of it, old as she is, I'll slap her face till her teeth rattle!