Doc Holliday Quotes in Tombstone (1993)

Curly Bill: [takes a bill with Wyatt's signature from a customer and throws it on the faro table] Wyatt Earp, huh? I heard of you.

Ike Clanton: Listen, Mr. Kansas Law Dog. Law don't go around here. Savvy?

Wyatt Earp: I'm retired.

Curly Bill: Good. That's real good.

Ike Clanton: Yeah, that's good, Mr. Law Dog, 'cause law don't go around here.

Wyatt Earp: I heard you the first time.

[flips a card]

Wyatt Earp: Winner to the King, five hundred dollars.

Curly Bill: Shut up, Ike.

Johnny Ringo: [Ringo steps up to Doc] And you must be Doc Holliday.

Doc Holliday: That's the rumor.

Johnny Ringo: You retired too?

Doc Holliday: Not me. I'm in my prime.

Johnny Ringo: Yeah, you look it.

Doc Holliday: And you must be Ringo. Look, darling, Johnny Ringo. The deadliest pistoleer since Wild Bill, they say. What do you think, darling? Should I hate him?

Kate: You don't even know him.

Doc Holliday: Yes, but there's just something about him. Something around the eyes, I don't know, reminds me of... me. No. I'm sure of it, I hate him.

Wyatt Earp: [to Ringo] He's drunk.

Doc Holliday: In vino veritas.

["In wine is truth" meaning: "When I'm drinking, I speak my mind"]

Johnny Ringo: Age quod agis.

["Do what you do" meaning: "Do what you do best"]

Doc Holliday: Credat Judaeus apella, non ego.

["The Jew Apella may believe it, not I" meaning: "I don't believe drinking is what I do best."]

Johnny Ringo: [pats his gun] Eventus stultorum magister.

["Events are the teachers of fools" meaning: "Fools have to learn by experience"]

Doc Holliday: [gives a Cheshire cat smile] In pace requiescat.

["Rest in peace" meaning: "It's your funeral!"]

Tombstone Marshal Fred White: Come on boys. We don't want any trouble in here. Not in any language.

Doc Holliday: Evidently Mr. Ringo's an educated man. Now I really hate him.

Doc Holliday: I'm your huckleberry...

Doc Holliday: [to Johnny Ringo] Why Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave.

Ike Clanton: What is that now? Twelve hands in a row? Holliday, son of a bitch, nobody's that lucky.

Doc Holliday: Why Ike, whatever do you mean? Maybe poker's just not your game Ike. I know! Let's have a spelling contest!

Billy Clanton: Why, it's the drunk piano player. You're so drunk, you can't hit nothin'. In fact, you're probably seeing double.

[Billy Clanton draws a knife]

Doc Holliday: [takes out a second gun] I have two guns, one for each of ya.

Johnny Ringo: My fight's not with you, Holliday.

Doc Holliday: I beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish. "Play for Blood," remember?

Johnny Ringo: Oh that. I was just foolin' about.

Doc Holliday: I wasn't.

Turkey Creek Jack Johnson: Doc, you oughta be in bed, what the hell you doin this for anyway?

Doc Holliday: Wyatt Earp is my friend.

Turkey Creek Jack Johnson: Hell, I got lots of friends.

Doc Holliday: I don't.

Doc Holliday: [to Johnny Ringo, after shooting him in a duel] You're no daisy! You're no daisy at all. Poor soul, you were just too high strung.

Wyatt Earp: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?

Doc Holliday: A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.

Wyatt Earp: What does he need?

Doc Holliday: Revenge.

Wyatt Earp: For what?

Doc Holliday: Bein' born.

Doc Holliday: Oh. Johnny, I apologize; I forgot you were there. You may go now.

Sherman McMasters: Where is he?

Doc Holliday: Down by the creek, walking on water.

Doc Holliday: [taunting a card player who believes Holliday is cheating him] Why Ed does this mean we're not friends anymore? You know Ed, if I thought you weren't my friend... I just don't think I could bear it!

Billy Clanton: [as Doc Holliday is drunkenly playing a somber piece on the saloon piano, Clanton speaks, just as drunkenly] Is that "Old Dog Trey? Sounds like "Old Dog Trey."

Doc Holliday: Pardon?

Billy Clanton: Stephen Foster. "Oh, Susannah", "Camptown Races". Stephen stinking Foster.

Doc Holliday: Ah, yes. Well, this happens to be a nocturne.

Billy Clanton: A which?

Doc Holliday: You know, Frederic fucking Chopin.

Turkey Creek Jack Johnson: Nobody move!

Doc Holliday: Nonsense. By all means, move.

Doc Holliday: Nonsense, I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Johnny Ringo: [waiting by an oak tree for Wyatt Earp for a showdown, he believes the person approaching is Wyatt] Well,I didn't think ya had it in you.

Doc Holliday: I'm your huckleberry.

[Ringo is startled that it's Holliday and not Wyatt]

Doc Holliday: Why, Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave.

Johnny Ringo: Fight's not with you, Holliday.

Doc Holliday: I'll beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish. Play for blood, remember?

Johnny Ringo: I was just foolin' about.

Doc Holliday: I wasn't. And this time...

[opens his coat to reveal a U.S. Deputy Marshal Badge]

Doc Holliday: ... it's legal.

Johnny Ringo: All right, lunger. Let's do it.

Doc Holliday: [they both start moving in circles slowly into position for a showdown, staring at each other without blinking] Say when.

Doc Holliday: [they both draw but Holliday is a tad quicker and shoots Ringo in the head and Ringo struggles to stay standing and finally falls] Poor soul. You were just too high-strung.

[Holliday places the badge on Ringo's corpse]

Doc Holliday: [Holliday hears running footsteps and turns to see Wyatt Earp approaching] I'm afraid the strain was more than he could bear. Oh, I wasn't quite as sick as I made out.

Wyatt Earp: Good God.

[knells to examine Ringo and picks up the badge]

Doc Holliday: My hypocrisy goes only so far.

Wyatt Earp: All right. Let's finish it.

Doc Holliday: Indeed, sir. The last charge of Wyatt Earp and his immortals

Doc Holliday: What did you ever want?

Wyatt Earp: Just to live a normal life.

Doc Holliday: There's no normal life, Wyatt, it's just life. Get on with it.

Wyatt Earp: Don't know how.

Doc Holliday: Sure you do. Say goodbye to me. Go grab that spirited actress and make her your own. Take that beauty from it, don't look back. Live every second. Live right on to the end. Live Wyatt. Live for me. Wyatt, if you were ever my friend - if ya ever had even the slightest of feelin' for me, leave now. Leave now... Please.

Wyatt Earp: Thanks for always being there, Doc.

[Wyatt Earp has just found out that the devil in a play was performed by a woman]

Wyatt Earp: Well, I'll be damned.

Doc Holliday: You may indeed, if you get lucky.

Doc Holliday: It's true, you are a good woman. Then again, you may be the antichrist.

Wyatt Earp: How are you?

Doc Holliday: I'm dying, how are you?

Frank McLaury: [a mortally wounded McLaury is taking aim at Doc] I've got you now... you son of a bitch!

Doc Holliday: [holds up arms] You're a daisy if you do!

[Morgan shoots McLaury]

Doc Holliday: My hypocrisy goes only so far.

Doc Holliday: Make no mistake, it's not revenge he's after. It's a reckonin'.

Doc Holliday: Forgive me if I don't shake hands.

Wyatt Earp: How many cards do you want?

Doc Holliday: I don't want to play any more.

Wyatt Earp: How many?

Doc Holliday: Damn it, you're the most fallible, stubborn, self-deluded, bullheaded man I've ever known in my entire life.

Wyatt Earp: I call.

[looks at Doc's cards]

Wyatt Earp: You win.

Doc Holliday: You're the only human being in my entire life that ever gave me hope...

Doc Holliday: It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Wyatt Earp: Doc you're not a hypocrite, you just like to sound like one.

Doc Holliday: I stand corrected, Wyatt. You're an oak.

Wyatt Earp: Sheriff Behan, have you met Doc Holliday?

Doc Holliday: Piss on you, Wyatt.

Doc Holliday: Why Johnny Tyler! You madcap!

Johnny Tyler: Doc?

Doc Holliday: Where you goin' with that shotgun?

Doc Holliday: Why Kate, you're not wearing a bustle. How lewd.

Johnny Ringo: [Ringo has taken Holliday up on his offer to 'finish the game'] All right, 'lunger'. Let's do it.

Doc Holliday: Say when.

Doc Holliday: [after killing Johnny Ringo] It would appear that the strain was more than he could bear.

Virgil Earp: What the hell kinda town is this?

Morgan Earp: Nice scenery.

Doc Holliday: Well, an enchanted moment.

Josephine Marcus: Interesting little scene. I wonder who that tall drink of water is.

Mr. Fabian: My dear, you've set your gaze upon the quintessential frontier type. Note the lean silhouette... eyes closed by the sun, though sharp as a hawk. He's got the look of both predator and prey.

Josephine Marcus: I want one.

Mr. Fabian: Happy hunting.

Doc Holliday: Very cosmopolitan.

Wyatt Earp: How we feelin' today, Doc?

Doc Holliday: I'm dying. How are you?

Wyatt Earp: Pretty much the same.

Wyatt Earp: [Before the shootout at the OK Corral] "It's not your problem, Doc, you don't have to mix up in this."

Doc Holliday: [Offeneded] "That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me."

Doc Holliday: You must be Ringo.

[to Big Nose Kate]

Doc Holliday: Look, darlin', it's Johnny Ringo. Deadliest pistoleer since Wild Bill, they say. What do you think, darlin', should I hate him?

Doc Holliday: Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Doc Holliday: And so she walked out of our lives forever.

Sherman McMasters: [about Wyatt] If they were my brothers, I'd want revenge, too.

Doc Holliday: Oh, make no mistake. It's not revenge he's after. It's a reckoning.

Kate: I've been good to you, I've taken care of you. If you die, where does that leave me?

Doc Holliday: Without a meal ticket I suppose.

[Doc rides horse out of barn into stable area, Kate runs out after him punching him in anger]

Kate: You bastard!

Doc Holliday: Why Kate, have you no kind words for me as I ride away?

[pause]

Doc Holliday: I calculate not.

[rides off]

Doc Holliday: Sheriff, allow me to present a pair of fellow sophisticates. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion. Mind your ear, Creek.

Doc Holliday: Maybe poker's just not your game, Ike. I know: let's have a spelling contest.

Wyatt Earp: You're the only person I can afford to loose to any more. How we feelin' today doc?

Doc Holliday: I'm dyin', how are you?

Wyatt Earp: Pretty much the same.

Doc Holliday: All of you can kiss my rebel dick.

Doc Holliday: Dave Rutabaugh is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions but self-control got the better of me.

Wyatt Earp: You been a good friend to me, Doc.

Doc Holliday: Shut up.

Doc Holliday: Wyatt Earp? I've heard that name before. Don't know where, but it wasn't good.

Wyatt Earp: What's wrong with you?

Doc Holliday: What is wrong with me? What have you got? I am dying of tuberculosis. I sleep with the nastiest whore in Kansas. Everyone who knows me hates me, and every morning I wake up surprised that I have to spend another day in this piss-hole world. (To onlookers) All you can kiss my rebel dick!

Wyatt Earp: Not everyone who knows you hates you, Doc.

Doc Holliday: I know it's not always easy being my friend, but I'll be there when you need me.

Doc Holliday: Wyatt, you ever wonder why we been a part of so many unfortunate incidents, yet we're still walking around? I have figured it out. It's nothing much, just luck. And you know why it's nothing much Wyatt? Because it doesn't matter much whether we are here today or not. I wake up every morning looking in the face of Death, and you know what? He ain't half bad. I think the secret old Mr. Death is holding is that it's better for some of us over on the other side. I know it can't be any worse for me. Maybe that's the place for your Maddie. For some people, this world ain't ever gonna be right.

[Wyatt takes his first drink for many years]

Wyatt Earp: Is that supposed to let me off the hook?

Doc Holliday: There is no hook my friend. There's only what we do.

Doc Holliday: Do you believe in friendship, Wyatt Earp?

Wyatt Earp: [nods head silently]

Doc Holliday: So do I. Do you have many friends?

Wyatt Earp: [shakes head 'no' silently]

Doc Holliday: Neither do I.

[indicates Shanssey]

Doc Holliday: John here has been a good friend to me when many others would not. *Dave Rutabagh* is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions, but... self-control always got the better of me.

[takes a slug of whiskey]

Doc Holliday: Besides, I'm a sporting man. I'm not a killer.

[goes into a coughing fit]

Frank Mclaury: You're next on my list, Holliday. You better get used to seeing my face, 'cause it's the last thing you're gonna see.

Doc Holliday: McLaury, seeing your face would be a pleasant change. I understand most of your enemies got it in the back.

John Shanssey: Doc...

Doc Holliday: John.

John Shanssey: Doc, this here is Wyatt Earp.

Doc Holliday: Wyatt Earp... I've heard that name before. Can't remember where, but it wasn't good.

Virgil Earp: We're gonna disarm them and take 'em in. You understand, Doc?

Doc Holliday: Oh, I understand Virgil. But

[taps shotgun]

Doc Holliday: do you think they will?

Warren Earp: Wyatt, you're still a marshal around here, aren't you?

Doc Holliday: Sure. But now he's going to be a marshal and an outlaw. Best of both worlds, son.

Doc Holliday: What do you want to do?

Wyatt Earp: Kill them all.

Wyatt Earp: I've heard a lot about you, too, Doc. You left your mark around in Deadwood, Denver and places. In fact, a man could almost follow your trail goin' from graveyard to graveyard.

Doc Holliday: There's one here, too... the biggest graveyard west of the Rockies. Marshals and I usually get along much better when we understand that right away.

Doc Holliday: I see we're in opposite camps, Marshal. Draw!

[Draws gun on Wyatt Earp, bar goes quiet]

Wyatt Earp: [Pulls open his vest showing he is unarmed] Can't...

Doc Holliday: We can take care of that easily enough. Mac...!

Wyatt Earp: [Virgil Earp slides pistol to Wyatt, who picks it up and examines it] Brother Morg's gun.

[Slides gun back to Morgan, Doc turns to see Morgan pick up pistol and holster it. Doc holsters his pistol as well]

Wyatt Earp: Big one, that's Morg. The other one, that good lookin' fella, that's my brother Virg. Doc Holliday, fellas!

Morgan Earp: [Smiling] Hiya, Doc!

Virgil Earp: Howdy.

Doc Holliday: Howdy!

[Looks back at Wyatt, who smiles, then back at Morgan and Virgil]

Doc Holliday: Have a drink!

[Tension in bar breaks, music starts again]

Morgan Earp: Don't mind if I do, Doc!

[Slaps Doc on back]

Doc Holliday: Cattle don't graze after sheep.

Doc Holliday: I need a little money and I thought maybe you'd like to come in with me.

[Pat laughs]

Doc Holliday: What's the matter?

Pat Garrett: I'll let you have the money, but if the deal's anything like that last one of yours, you better not tell me about it.

Doc Holliday: Why not?

[Pat pulls back his vest and reveals his Sheriff's badge]

Doc Holliday: Where'd you get that?

Pat Garrett: Oh, they stuck it on me about two weeks ago.

Doc Holliday: You're the last man I thought would be so easily satisfied.

Pat Garrett: Well, l... l... , a man's gotta settle down sometime.

[Pat and Doc rescue Rio, whom Billy has left bound, gagged and strung up by wrists within sight of a desert waterhole]

Doc Holliday: You know, I think he's in love with you.

Rio: What are you talking about?

Doc Holliday: The crazier a man is for a woman, the crazier he thinks and the crazier he acts.

Rio: He's only crazy about one thing - himself.

Pat Garrett: Hey, that gives me a thought. Maybe we'll get Mr. Billy after all.

Rio: How?

Pat Garrett: Like you said - if he's crazy enought to do you like this, maybe he's crazy enough to come back to turn you loose.

Doc Holliday: Sonny, that head of yours is sure screwed on tight.

Billy the Kid: If it wasn't, somebody would have knocked it off long ago.

Doc Holliday: Well, Billy, I guess this is it. Men are pretty much like children after all. Have you ever seen two kids wrestling in the yard? They push and they tussle and maybe they look like they're fighting... but they're not. They're really friends and everything is fun. Then pretty soon they play a little too rough. One of them gets mad. And in the end, somebody always gets hurt. So for you and me, this is where somebody gets hurt. But when it's over, and however it turns out, son, no hard feelings.

Billy the Kid: I think I'll have another drink of water.

Doc Holliday: What are you talking about? You didn't have one in the first place.

Billy the Kid: I know, but I had the same idea about an hour ago.

Doc Holliday: It wouldn't do any good. Take my advice.

Billy the Kid: What?

Doc Holliday: Killing a woman.

Billy the Kid: Why not?

Doc Holliday: Because they're all alike. There isn't anything they wouldn't do for you... or to you.

Doc Holliday: Forgive me, mademoiselle.

Miss Plantagenet: What the hell kind of talk is that?

Wyatt Earp: Now, as I understand it, a mademoiselle is a madam who ain't quite made it yet - only younger and friskier. I'd call it a compliment.

Wyatt Earp: Say, you're the doctor around here. How come I always have to perform all the complicated operations?

Doc Holliday: You know I am a dentist, not a doctor. Wait until somebody shoot him in the teeth.

Wyatt Earp: They're bad people, John.

Doc Holliday: Well, if it weren't for bad people, what would you do for a living, Marshal? Tell me about Tombstone. I mean, more than what you said in the letter.

Wyatt Earp: It's wide open. The sheriff here, Johnny Behan, doesn't know how to organize a town, so I'm going to run against him in the election. The sheriff has got all the power here. The marshal has got a badge and he's got some territory, but he's got no jurisdiction in the town. Gambling is heavy. There's a lot of money about town. It's wide open. So you organize the gambling - start right here. I run the law, you run the gambling. We'll both end up rich. Very rich!

Doc Holliday: We sound like bad people, Wyatt.

Wyatt Earp: We are, John.

[the Kid wants to become a gunslinger]

The Kid: I've got to learn, Mr. Holliday.

Doc Holliday: Why did you come after me and not somebody else?

The Kid: Because they say you're the best there is. Because I've read all about you in those dime novels, Mr. Holliday. Because... because you're a legend.

Doc Holliday: How old are you?

The Kid: I'm eighteen.

Doc Holliday: What are you going to do with your life? Don't you have any ambition?

The Kid: Yes, Mr. Holliday, I want to be like you.

[last lines]

Alamo Bowie: Hey, Doc. How'd you like to go back to God's country?

Doc Holliday: El Paso?

Alamo Bowie: Sure.