Barbara Worth: Your dream is coming true. The desert will bloom like a paradise.
Willard Holmes: You're wasting yourself here, Miss Worth - like an orchid in a bucket of sand.
Barbara Worth: You don't know the desert as I do. It's beautiful.
Willard Holmes: Beautiful perhaps for one moonlit night, but if you could see the big cities - if they could see you.
Barbara Worth: To redeem the desert - to make it all one garden - isn't that a fine thing to do?
Willard Holmes: But you don't belong here among these human cactus plants.


--Ronald Colman (as ) in The Winning of Barbara Worth

Colette: Epitaph? What's that?
François Villon: Oh, usually something good about somebody bad... after they're dead.


--Ronald Colman (as François Villon) in If I Were King

Rene: Fine time to be writing poetry.
François Villon: What better time? If a man isn't inspired by his own death, he's beyond inspiration.


--Ronald Colman (as François Villon) in If I Were King

High Lama: It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision, long, long ago. I saw all the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in the vulgar passions and the will to destroy. I saw the machine power multiplying, until a single weaponed man might match a whole army. I foresaw a time when man, exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure, would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving, that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and of culture that I could, and preserve them here, against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. A time must come my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time, is why I avoided death, and am here. And why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music, and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind! When that day comes, it is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes, my son; When the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Robert Conway: I understand you father.


--Ronald Colman (as Robert Conway) in Lost Horizon

Beauregard Bottomley: [on phone in Flame O'Neal's apartment] Miss O'Neal is having Bottomley trouble!
[Slams down phone]


--Ronald Colman (as Beauregard Bottomley) in Champagne for Caesar

Beauregard Bottomley: [to waters] Shall I genuflect when leaving or just face Mecca?


--Ronald Colman (as Beauregard Bottomley) in Champagne for Caesar

Beauregard Bottomley: I know everything except what is commonly known as how to make a buck.


--Ronald Colman (as Beauregard Bottomley) in Champagne for Caesar

Beauregard Bottomley: If it is noteworthy and rewarding to know that 2 and 2 make 4 to the accompaniment of deafening applause and prizes, then 2 and 2 making 4 will become the top level of learning.


--Ronald Colman (as Beauregard Bottomley) in Champagne for Caesar

David Grant: [Opening lines after passin Jean on the street] Good luck!


--Ronald Colman (as ) in Lucky Partners

Dick Heldar: Painting is seeing, then remembering better than you saw.


--Ronald Colman (as ) in The Light that Failed