The Mission Quotes

Mendoza For me these is no redemption, no penance great enough.

Gabriel There is. But do you dare to try it?

Mendoza Do you dare to see it fail?

Altamirano Though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth and love is kind. Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. But now abideth faith, hope, love... these three. But the greatest of these is love.

Fielding How long must he carry that stupid thing?

Gabriel God knows.

Gabriel So you're hunting above the falls now, Captain Mendoza?

Gabriel We're building a mission here. We're going to make Christians of these people!

Mendoza If you have the time.

Mendoza Are you laughing at me?

Gabriel I am laughing because what I see is laughable. I see a coward, a man running from the world.

Gabriel If you die with blood in your hands, Rodrigo, then you betray everything we have done! You promised your life to God! AND GOD IS LOVE!

Altamirano So, your Holiness. Now your priests are dead, and I am left alive. But in truth it is I who am dead, and they who live. For as always, your Holiness. The spirit of the dead will survive in the memory of the living.

Altamirano And you have the effrontery to tell me that this slaughter was necessary?

Altamirano With an orchestra, the Jesuits could have subdued the entire continent.

Altamirano Your Holiness, a surgeon to save the body must often hack off a limb. But in truth nothing could prepare me for the beauty and the power of the limb that I had come here to sever.

Gabriel If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don't have the strength to live in a world like that, Rodrigo.

Hontar We must work in the world, your eminence. The world is thus.

Altamirano No, Señor Hontar. Thus have we made the world... thus have I made it.

Portuguese Soldier None of us wants to do this.

Portuguese Commander I'm not interested. Take your position!

Altamirano Tell them they must leave the missions. They must submit to the will of God.

Gabriel They say it was the will of God that they came out of the jungle and built the mission. They don't understand why God has changed his mind.

Gabriel We are not the members of a democracy, Father. We are the members of an order.

Cabeza I cannot and will not accept a challenge from a priest. His cloth protects him.

Mendoza My cloth protects *you*!