- Steerpike: [singing to the starving, half-dead twins] I'm as mad as mad can be. Watch me get your whole family! I'm as mad as mad can be. And you two and me make three...
- [Irma wants to throw a party in her honor to find a suitor]
- Dr. Prunesquallor: A party, my dear? Are you the type to give a party? Indeed, are you the type to go to one?
- [Irma brandishes a knife at him]
- Dr. Prunesquallor: [startled] Oh, but I see that you are determined.
- [speaking to himself, after his colleagues have suggested that Irma Prunesquallor desires him]
- Prof. Bellgrove: Well, tonight's the night. Will I or won't I... Irma Prunesquallor? Statement made in the staffroom: She's passionate about me. Consider. One: It's poppycock. Two: My damned staff are damned interferers. Call themselves teachers! They lie to add zest to the party. Three: I haven't questioned their lie, so they don't know that I've seen through it. Four: So far, so good. Five: How do I turn the tables against these spoilers of all that is young and wonderful and, let's face it, lamblike? Six: What's wrong with Irma Prunesquallor, anyway? Noses must be some shape or other, or, as that damned idiot Shred would say, they wouldn't exist at all. Seven: No bosoms to speak of, true... but then, what are bosoms, weighed against... hm, quite. Eight: I'm lonely. Oh, Bellgrove, such scouring, not to say moving, honesty! Nine: What a catch I am for any woman. Ten: Oh God, please make her mine!
- Dr. Prunesquallor: My only thought, my Arabic one, is that having so precisely positioned such protuberances is it not spitting in the face of the divine to conceal them?
- Irma: You're going to ruin it. I knew you were!
- Dr. Prunesquallor: The vivacity of the visage, sweet necotine, and the twin peaks of paradise are, shall we say, hidden beneath net.
- Irma: Paradise? Hidden? Oh, never! It is I, Irma! Oh, let them come! My men from the mountains!