- Gus Morgan: Maybe you think a quitter doesn't have to defend himself.
- Ethan Morgan: I'm not a quitter, Gus.
- Gus Morgan: Well, what would you call it? Do you have a better name for it?
- Ethan Morgan: Yes. How about: common sense?
- Ethan Morgan: You won't have any trouble recognising him. He's Vice President of the Kansas and Pacific Railroads and acts every inch of it.
- Sam Benson: In the first place young Morgan is one of them college engineers. In the second place I'd dang sight rather work for him than his brother. Gus Morgan didn't care how many backs he broke.
- Ethan Morgan: We're not going to be able to keep the sandstone up there without an awful lot of help.
- Ethan Morgan: Ah, I shoulda known a rig like this wasn't built for the desert.
- Duke Shannon: You pull it here by yourself?
- Ethan Morgan: Nah, I learnt that when you unhitch a horse, you better tie him up.
- Christopher Hale: A man doesn't know how far he'll go to survive. Or help somebody he loves. I decided I didn't have the right to judge you. I'd just keep you in town, and keep you and everybody else thinking I was gonna kill ya. And let you judge yourself.
- Charlie Wooster: [They are in the doctor's rooms, a striking quilt on the bed] Mr Chris, what are you doing up? Now you get back in bed. You ain't spent half enough time in there yet.
- Charlie Wooster: A man doesn't know how much blood he's gonna lose in one of those gun battles.
- Christopher Hale: That's right, Charlie.
- Charlie Wooster: Be a long time, I guess, before I do any cooking.
- Christopher Hale: That's right, Charlie.
- Charlie Wooster: Cutting any wood, that'll be a long time too.
- Christopher Hale: Yes, Charlie.
- Charlie Wooster: Possibly never wash any dishes again.
- Christopher Hale: Yes, Charlie.
- Ethan Morgan: Oh, I understand, all right. I understand how it is with a man who solves every one of his problems with his bare hands, even murder.
- Charlie Wooster: You know how cold it gets up there in them mountains. Snow and all.
- Duke Shannon: I know.
- Charlie Wooster: Mr Chris up there. Cold and all alone.
- Duke Shannon: Better go and get him, Charlie. I'm not gonna leave him there through the night.
- Christopher Hale: Morgan... Morgan...
- Gus Morgan: What do you want? I can't carry you both. Don't you know that. I can't carry you both. Why don't you just...
- Christopher Hale: Wait the storm out.
- Ethan Morgan: But you need a doctor, Mr Hale.
- Christopher Hale: Too tough to die. Find a rock overhang. Use stretcher for breaking storm. Build fire. Marches, my coat pocket. Wait out storm, our only chance.
- Charlie Wooster: Duke, you'd think he'd have more consideration for his friends, wouldn't you?
- Duke Shannon: I was thinking of something else.
- Charlie Wooster: Huh?
- Duke Shannon: Morgan said he left him almost one thousand feet above the snowline. I was thinking, that's a long way for a man to crawl, especially a dead man.
- Ethan Morgan: I don't understand you, Gus. You never drank like that before.
- Gus Morgan: Leave me alone.
- Ethan Morgan: Look, if there's something, can't you tell me what it is.
- Gus Morgan: What could YOU do?
- Gus Morgan: [In the hotel room with unique quilts on each bed] You don't leave a wounded animal to die and suffer a slow death. You put it out of its misery. And that's what he was. He was an animal. That's what we all were, just animals, trying to stay alive. I didn't want to the one that made the choice. But I did.
- Gus Morgan: [At the ticket office window] Ma'am, ma'am, one for the Eastbound.
- Depot Clerk: Sorry. Too late. All sold out.
- Gus Morgan: No, no. No, you're not doing that to me again. You said come back Thursday. Now I'm back and I want my ticket.
- [She slams the shutter down]
- Gus Morgan: I want my ticket. I WANT MY TICKET! I WANT MY TICKET!
- Depot Clerk: [She returns, cocks her gun] You know, I can shoot you for trying to break in this here ticket office. I could say you were trying to steal the money.
- Gus Morgan: You got no right to refuse me. Now I say you gotta help me.
- Ethan Morgan: I know all about the percentage of rise, and the degrees of curvature, and tract of power. And I also know you can solve every one of those problems by using two locomotives instead of one.
- Ethan Morgan: You've achieved a lot without a formal education. I can appreciate you learn by trial and error. But I learned the reason why things work the way they do. I learned how to save a lot of energy. I learned how to value a human life.
- Gus Morgan: Where're you going? You going into some corner to lick your wounds?
- Ethan Morgan: You think I should hit you back, don't you?
- Gus Morgan: Yes, I like it better. I think a man would.
- Ethan Morgan: Then I'm sorry to disappoint you. Maybe if you'd be around more, you could have taught me that a man is only a man when he can force other men to their knees. And watch them die without getting sick to his stomach.
- Charlie Wooster: When you get back, Chris, I'll be waiting for you in the Saloon.
- Duke Shannon: That's no lie.
- Charlie Wooster: I think I'll start waiting for you right now.
- Ethan Morgan: A locomotive still just a piece of machinery. You feed it coal and water and it works for you. It runs and your railway makes money. And when a locomotive gets worn out and quits, you don't mourn it and feel guilty because you ended its life. You toss it on the scrapheap and get a new one and forget about it.
- Gus Morgan: Are you trying to stack an engine up against the lives of the men who were lost in the tunnel?
- Ethan Morgan: One of the men was Sam Benson, a friend of mine, and yours once. Before you outgrew a gang.
- Gus Morgan: You don't run a railway on sentiment.
- Ethan Morgan: All right, Gus. How much in dollars and cents do you think those 20 lives were worth? Enough to buy a locomotive?
- Duke Shannon: You wanna tell me what's ailing yah?
- Duke Shannon: Oh, what kind of scout are you anyway? If you don't know by now, when it rains down in the desert this time of year, it snows in the high country.
- Duke Shannon: And you're worried about him being up there?
- Charlie Wooster: Why? Ain't you?
- Christopher Hale: There are different types of men, Morgan. I think your brother's a man.
- Gus Morgan: You siding with him?
- Christopher Hale: I don't know enough about railroading to side with anybody. But I do know something about people. I haven't got any more stomach to see 20 men die than Ethan. You want to tell me I'm not a man?