(In Jim's and Muriel's Manhattan apartment, space is not exactly available in abundance.)
Muriel: Looking for something?
Jim: My socks!
Muriel: Why don't you look in your sock drawer?
Jim: That's where I found my underwear ...
Muriel: Ooh. (Considering) Well, try your underwear drawer.
Jim: I am in my underwear drawer.
Muriel: Well, they must be somewhere - socks don't just get up
and walk away by themselves!

Jim: Hmm - (he finds one of her nightgowns) Muriel, I thought we
had it clearly understood that these two - two and a half drawers
were mine. I thought - why didn't ...
Muriel: Closet! That's where they are. We put them in the closet.
Jim: Put what in the closet?
Muriel: Your socks! There didn't seem to be enough room in the drawers.
Jim: ... oh, but there's so much of it in the closet ...
Muriel: So Gussie and I decided that from now on we'll keep them in a basket on the shelf!
Jim: ... Basket ...

Muriel: What a wonderful friend!
Jim: What's with all this kissing all of a sudden?
Muriel: What's that?
Jim: Well - just because a man is helpful in a business way, it doesn't give him extracurricular privileges with my wife!
Muriel: That's a fine thing to say about a friend of fifteen years!
Jim: Well, I just don't like it. Every time he goes out of this house, he shakes my hand and he kisses you.
Muriel: Would you prefer it the other way around?
Jim: Mmh ... Why is he always hanging around - why doesn't he
ever get married or something?
Muriel: Because he can't find another girl as pretty and sweet and wholesome as I am!

(Muriel and Jim going through sketches with the architect, Mr.
Simms)
Mr.Simms: May I suggest that neither of these are really major
eliminations. Now, if you could do with one less bathroom ...
Muriel: I'm sorry, we couldn't possibly!
Mr.Simms: A simple bathroom, eight by ten by eight, with grade
A fixtures, will cost around thirteen hundred dollars.
Muriel: I refuse to endanger the health of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms!
Jim: For thirteen hundred dollars, they can live in a house with three bathrooms and rough it!

Jim: Now just a minute! I'm entitled to know what I did. This is America - a man is guilty until he's proven innocent!
Betsy: It's the other way around, father!
Jim: You go to bed!
Muriel: Go!

(Jim's first attempt at lighting a fire inside the new house)
Betsy: Father, the first principle of lighting a fire is to see if the
flue is open. A three year-old child knows that.
Jim (annoyed): Next time we want a fire I'll send out for a three
year-old child!

(The girls unpacking stuff after moving into the new house)
Betsy (whistling)
Joan: What's that?
Betsy: That's mother's diary while she was in college. It's slightly torrid!

(Muriel explaining to the handymen how the rooms in the new house are supposed to be painted.)
Muriel: Now, Mr. P. Delford, we'll talk about the painting.
Mr.Delford: Okay.
Muriel: I had some samples - ah, here they are. Now, first: the living room. I want it to be a soft green.
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Not as blue green as a robin, say, ...
Mr.Delford: No ...
Muriel: ... but not as yellow green as daffodil.
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow. But don't let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too
blue.
Mr.Delford: No.
Muriel: It should just be a sort of greyish-yellow green!
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Now, the dining room I'd like yellow. Not just yellow - a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiny.
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: I tell you, Mr. P. Delford - if you'll send one of your
workmen to the grocer for a pound of their best butter and match that exactly, you can't go wrong!
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Now, this is the paper we're going to use in the hall. It's
flowered, but I don't want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers.
Mr.Delford: No ...
Muriel: There's some little dots in the background, and it's these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhockle, ...
Mr.Delford: No ...
Muriel: ... but the little blueish dot between the rosebud and the
delphinium blossom. Is that clear?
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Now, the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic
hospital white.
Mr.Delford: No ...
Muriel: A little warmer - but still, not to suggest any other color but white.
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
Muriel: Now for the carter room - in here - I want you to match this thread. And don't lose it: it's the only spool I have, and I had
an awful time finding it. As you can see, it's practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened
jonathan.
Mr.Delford: Aha ...
(The sound of tableware falling down is heard in the background)
Muriel: Oh, excuse me ...
Mr.Delford: You got that, Charlie?
Jack: Red, green, blue, yellow, white!
Mr.Delford: Correct.

(Jim Blandings working on the slogan for the new Wham
commercial)
Jim: Compare the price - Compare the slice. Take our advice: "Buy Wham!"
(That's not very good. With a sigh, Jim lies down on a sofa. - There
comes the next idea.)
Jim: If you'd buy better ham, you'd better buy Wham!
Assistant: Boil Petroleum. "Buy better oil, you better buy Boil."
Jim: Mhm.
(Another useless one. Jim starts considering again.)
Jim: This little piggy went to market,
as meek and as mild as a lamb.
He smiled in his tracks when they slipped him the axe -
He knew he'd turn out to be Wham!
(Jim's assistant gives him a look of sheer disgust).
Jim: ... he knew he'd turn out to be Wham. - It's gone. I've lost my touch! Well, maybe I never had a touch, who knows. I can't
think any more. All I've got on my mind is a house with an 18,000 dollar mortgage, and bills, and extras, and antiques and - oh, I
don't know.

Jim Blandings: It's a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you
start they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out
to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse. And if it can happen to me, what about the guys who aren't making $15,000 a year? The ones who want a home of their own. It's a conspiracy, I tell you---against every boy and girl who were ever in love!

Bill Cole: You've been taken to the cleaners, and you don't even know your pants are off.

Gussie: If you ain't eatin' Wham, you ain't eatin' ham!

Jim Blandings: Nothing, Mary. Just a private joke between me
and whoever my analyst is going to be.