- Maria Cosway: That's how it is here. People play at love. It's not serious. It is different in Italy. There, we kill for it!
- Thomas Jefferson: I kept having a debate between my head and my heart.
- Maria Cosway: Which in your case, the head always wins.
- Thomas Jefferson: Not this time. My poor head was simply whirled around by my unruly heart.
- Maria Cosway: Oh-dear-God.
- Thomas Jefferson: It kept telling me I love the lady and will continue to love her forever. If she were on one side of the globe and I on the other, I would pierce through the whole mass of the world to reach her.
- Thomas Jefferson: Independence is not a toy for children to play with, but the privilege of a fully matured mind.
- Richard Cosway: Friendship is but another word for an alliance with the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient. Why take on those of another?
- Head and Heart Game - Rosina: When sorrow makes us weep, how sweet it is to have a friend to wipe away our tears.
- Head and Heart Game: With such a comfort, our very grief may turn to joy.
- Madison Hemings: No matter whose blood flows in your veins, you're either master or you're slave. You're white or you're black and no in between.
- Thomas Jefferson: But the friendship of the shepherdesses is based on their ferocious greed. The queen's favourites take advantage of her lonely craving for affection threatening to leave her whenever she fails to accede to their insatiable demands.
- Thomas Jefferson: The best way of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness.
- Maria Cosway: Nobody cares for him who cares for nobody.
- Thomas Jefferson: A wise man will only depend on himself.
- Schoolgirl: He spread her legs as widely as possible, and knelt down to enjoy her charms.
- Schoolgirl: Is that how we excite men?
- Schoolgirl: Toinette abandoned herself to her pleasure.
- Schoolgirl: I do think in lovemaking some perversity is no bad thing.
- Head and Heart Game: Listen to me! All the frigid speculations of the head are not worth one generous spasm of the heart.
- Head and Heart Game: Nothing is in our power except intellectual pleasure. In contemplating truth and nature, matter and emotion, we ride, serene and sublime, above the concerns of the mortal world.
- James Hemings: If that nigger don't walk the chalk, y'all put him on the block and sell him! But ain't nobody gonna buy a drinkin' nigger. He ain't no use for work.