- Katie: [looking at a carving] What does that mean?
- Chips: Gnothe seauthon. Know yourself. The watchword of Apollo.
- Katie: The god of prophecy.
- Chips: Amongst other things...
- [Later at the close of the scene]
- Katie: [contemplating the temple she has visited] Know yourself. That's quite a watchword. Gnothe seauthon.
- Chips: You're most retentive.
- Katie: Give me a good line and I can remember it.
- Katie: Sorry, am I going too fast for you?
- Chips: My dear young lady, I could easily go just as fast as you if I cared to risk a broken ankle and be carried back on a stretcher. It's extremely foolish to leap around in a ruined circus like a mountain goat. Especially in those shoes. These stones are very treacherous.
- Katie: Yes, well, you're very active for your age!
- Chips: Since you cannot conceivably know what my age is, your most flattering conviction, dear Miss Bridges, must be based on a somewhat conjectural premise.
- Katie: [laughs] You've done it again. Now that's three times you've made me laugh. And only this morning I really did think I'd never laugh again. I suppose it's your being a schoolmaster.
- Chips: [insulted] I fail to see what's so laughable about that.
- Katie: Well, no, it's not laughable. One doesn't laugh at people only because they're funny. Not some people, anyway.
- Chips: [after Miss Honeybun interrupts them] Oh, I'm extremely sorry, I was kissing my wife.
- Miss Honeybun: Why?
- Chips: I don't know, really. It somehow seemed a good idea at the time.
- Chips: Is my wife here?
- Ursula: Wife? Which wife, darling?
- Chips: She was called Katherine Bridges.
- Ursula: Katie? Of course she's here! Did you say 'wife,' darling?
- Chips: Yes.
- Ursula: Well, that would make you her husband, wouldn't it?
- Chips: Yes, it would.
- Ursula: Then she's not here, darling. She's nowhere near the place.
- [Chips starts to leave. Ursula stops him]
- Ursula: That's what I was told to say, if you came in. She's in the kitchen, darling, making scrambled eggs.
- Calbury: I've met you somewhere before. I certainly remember that voice.
- Chips: Now here are your stick and hat, and that, as you plainly know, is the front door.
- Calbury: Katie, you...?
- Chips: Straight ahead, please.
- Calbury: That voice. There's something about it. I don't know who you are, but I can guess what you are. You're a school teacher, aren't you?
- Chips: Correct.
- Calbury: I bet you give your boys hell.
- Chips: Only the bad ones.
- Katie: No, the allusion was to the stage which used to be my profession.
- Headmaster: Indeed.
- Headmaster's Wife: You're an actress, Mrs. Chipping?
- Katie: Well, not even my best friends would call me that.
- Headmaster's Wife: [snidely] Aw, and what would they call you?
- Katie: A soubrette. That's the girl in musical comedy who sings the big number and, in the end, loses the man.
- [Chuckles]
- Katie: In real life, they nearly always end up the wives of earls. I nearly did. But luckily... I met Chips.
- Chips: [to his students] The Lex Canuleia is not, as Cawley Minor seems to think, a law regulating canals, but a law that permitted Roman patricians to marry plebeians. An easy way to remember it is to imagine a Miss Plebeian wishing to marry a Mr. Patrician, and Mr. Patrician saying he can't. She could then reply "Oh yes, you can, you liar."
- [Chips and Staefel are discussing Katie, Chips's new wife]
- Max Staefel: Oh, dear fellow, dear fellow, I hope you've been wise.
- Chips: Of course, I've been wise you old idiot.
- Max Staefel: A pretty face is not everything, you know, dear fellow. There's so many questions of temperament and suitability.
- Chips: "Suitability?" That's a horrible word, Max. It isn't even in the dictionary.
- Max Staefel: It's in Webster.
- Chips: Oh, Webster. Are you implying she's unsuitable to me?
- Max Staefel: I'm simply wondering is she's suitable... as your wife.
- [after Katie flees to London, afraid she will cause a scandal for Chips]
- Chips: That's a bloody silly word! "Suitability."
- Max Staefel: I didn't invent it.
- Chips: How do *I* know?
- Max Staefel: It's in Webster!
- Chips: Well, I'm not going to let it happen, Max!
- [Chips runs down the street and jumps onto a passing bus, headed for London. Clinging to the side of the bus, he shouts back]
- Chips: Apollo has willed it!
- Katie: Ursula, darling, you must see the bell tower. And here's your guide
- [pointing to Herr Staefel]
- Katie: .
- Ursula: The bell tower?
- [realizing Katie's unspoken intention]
- Ursula: Oh, yes, of course... the bell tower!
- [laughs]
- Ursula: [Later...]
- Max Staefel: I hope you like early English perpendicular.
- Ursula: Darling, I revel in early English perpendicular!
- Headmaster: Clipping's waiting for his wife, I think.
- Headmaster's Wife: [skeptical] His wife?
- Sutterwick: Flabbergasting. Who on earth?
- Headmaster's Wife: Who on earth indeed?
- [hoots]
- Headmaster's Wife: It's what we've all been asking ourselves ever since we heard the news.
- Headmaster: It's apparently someone he met on one of his excursions to the ancient ruins of Pompeii.
- Headmaster's Wife: Somewhat of an ancient ruin herself, no doubt.
- [chuckles]
- Headmaster: An ancient ruin did you say, my dear?
- Sutterwick: [upon seeing Katie] This isn't a joke, is it?
- Headmaster's Wife: Chipping's lost all sense of proportion.
- Headmaster: Some people might think he'd found it.
- Katie: I'm so terribly sorry about being late. Chips says it's almost as bad as being off your number.
- Headmaster: I'm afraid I don't quite understand that allusion, Mrs. Chipping.
- Katie: Oh, Mrs. Chipping! I just love when I'm called that.
- Headmaster: And you are that, yes?
- Katie: Oh, yes! Well and truly! Well, unless Chips is a bigamist which I rather suspect. How else could he have escaped... until now?
- Ursula: Oh, but I adore English public schools! I simply worship them all! Even that idiotic Westchester... where you can't ask a boy out to tea without everyone asking the most extraordinary questions.
- Chips: [to his students] There was a boy who, when asked to translate into Latin Tennyson's beautiful lines "Break, break, break on Thy cold grey stones, O Sea," came up with "O fluctus, fluctus, rumpety-rumpety jam!" (laughter from the class) He's now a bishop. (More laughter)
- Chips: He plainly thinks I'm a bloody sadist.
- Max Staefel: My dear fellow, that's the first time I ever heard you swear.
- Chips: There has to be a first time for everything.
- Max Staefel: What do they call you?
- Chips: "Ditchie."
- Max Staefel: Ditchie? That's not too bad.
- Chips: It's short for "ditchwater," and that is a simile for "dull."
- Max Staefel: I don't think the boys do dislike you.
- Chips: Yes, they do. I can't blame them. If I were one of them, I'd dislike myself, I think.
- Chips: What is a worse failure than a teacher who can't make his pupils grasp the importance of what he has to teach? Can you answer me that?
- Max Staefel: Yes. A teacher who doesn't try to.
- Headmaster: I don't know what Sutterwick's father's going to say.
- Chips: I do. Something very smooth, very offensive and quite beside the point.
- Price: My dear Baxter, what an absurd fuss over a game of tennis.
- Max Staefel: A game of tennis? It is the final of the Junior Cup.
- Price: It's still a game of pat-ball over a net with a piece of framed catgut - and an unworthy subject for a quarrel between housemasters.
- Chips: [singing] What does the future show? Spring will return again next year, And when she does, She'll find me here, Wondering still, I know, Where did my childhood go?
- Mrs. Summersthwaite: It's a divine show, quite divine. and a very big hit.
- Chips: Hit?
- Mrs. Summersthwaite: That means a success.
- Chips: Does it?
- Mrs. Summersthwaite: "Flossie from Fulham" is a divine show and you'll adore it.
- Chips: "Wine-dark sea" is a perfectly acceptable description of the Aegean Sea, Barker. I agree Homer does use it rather a lot. But then there are some epithets we all use rather a lot, don't we? I believe your favorite is: "stinky." Isn't it? Forgive me if I prefer Homer's more colourful imagery.
- Chips: Well, boys, I've finished. You've all hated me for this, I know, but I am paid to teach you and your parents pay Brookfield for you to learn. We have a mutual duty, in fact, and it's not a duty that I, for one, am prepared to betray. This is goodbye for 10 weeks. May I wish you all a happy holiday. You may go.
- Johnny Longbridge: This is Chips. I told you about him, remember?
- Katie: Of course. Hasn't he any other name?
- Johnny Longbridge: Well, if he has, I can't remember it.
- Katie: Then I'd better call you Mr. Chips. That's rather a nice name. How do you do, Mr. Chips?
- Chips: How do you do, Miss Bridges?
- Katie: What will you think of me?
- Johnny Longbridge: Nothing. Except that you're a terrible muddler of dates, that's all. And I've known that for ages.
- Katie: [singing] You can have Paris, And Venice and Rome, But London is London, Is London is England, Is home...
- Johnny Longbridge: Goodbye, Katie. Marvelous seeing you. Goodbye.
- Chips: Goodbye, Miss Bridges.
- Katie: Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
- Katie: There's nothing more awful than being bothered by somebody when you really want is to be on your own. Nobody knows that better than me. Sorry. Than I.
- Katie: Oh, what a wonderful day it's been.
- Chips: Yes. Yes, indeed. Quite wonderful.
- Katie: Can't we make it a wonderful night too?
- Chips: Ah. Well, as it happens, Miss Bridges, for tomorrow, I have a rather tight curriculum.
- Katie: Well, loosen it. Tonight, Mr. Chips, you and I are going to make whoopee.
- Chips: The term is new to me. What does it mean?
- Katie: Look, Mr. Chips. Seems to me you've learned just about everything - but you haven't learned the first thing about me. Ever heard of a captain who hates the sea? That's me. I. Only with I, me, it's the theatre. You tell me the show must go on and what do I answer? Why?
- Katie: Come on. There's so much left to see before the sun goes down on us.
- [singing]
- Katie: A million planets, Were swimming in the sky, I only saw the sun, A million faces drifted by, Suddenly, there was one, Filling my mind, Like the day was filled with sun, Telling my heart, My life had just begun...