"You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down."
George says this to Mary on their first date after the school dance. It shows that George has great hopes and dreams to fulfill. He is so confident in his ability to achieve his dreams that he suggests that he can lasso the moon and give it to Mary.
"Homesick? For Bedford Falls?"
George screams this at Mary because he can't believe that anyone would choose to stay in Bedford Falls. He sees it as an old crummy town that he can't wait to get out of and see the world. He is also overcompensating trying to show Mary that he is not in love with her, even though he is very much in love with her.
"Better to get half than to get nothin'."
Tom, one of the residents of Bedford Falls, tells this to the mob at the Building and Loan when he hears that Potter is offering fifty cents on the dollar for people to leave the Baileys' business and come to him. His statement embodies the panic that was sweeping over the entire nation during the Great Depression.
"Teacher says, 'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.'"
At the end of the film, George's daughter, Zuzu, notices that there is a bell ringing on the Christmas tree and delivers this line, which rings true for George, who just had a real live run-in with a guardian angel in search of some wings.
"My mouth's bleeding, Bert! My mouth's bleedin'!"
George says this when he realizes that he is no longer in Clarence's hypothetical reality, but returned to his real life. While it seems like, logically, he ought to be concerned about his bleeding lip, he is actually overjoyed, as it signals to him that his life has returned to the way that it was.
"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
In the cemetery, Clarence says this to George in response to the fact that, were George to have never been born, his brother Harry would have died as a child. Clarence comments on the fact that, although George thinks the world would have been better without him, he has in fact touched so many lives and made them better.
"People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you'll ever be!"
After George's father dies, the evil Mr. Potter wants to shut down his business, Bailey's Building and Loan. In an impassioned speech, George denounces Potter's greed and suggests that, even if his father wasn't a particularly successful businessman, he tried to help people and he believed in the little man, which made him far "richer" than Potter might ever hope to be.
"George Bailey, I'll love you 'til the day I die."
As a young girl, Mary has a big crush on George. One day, while visiting him at his work at the drugstore, she whispers this line into his deaf ear. It is a sweet and heartwarming confession, but one that literally falls on a deaf ear.
"To my big brother George, the richest man in town!"
At the very end of the film, George's younger brother Harry, a war hero, comes into his house, as everyone in town is donating money to help the Building and Loan company stay afloat. He raises a toast to his older brother and celebrates how much he has done for the town, and how he is a man rich in good fortune.
"Peter Bailey was not a business man. That's what killed him."
Potter says this to George about his father, a rather heartless thing to say. He does not believe in the benevolence that Mr. Bailey exhibited towards his customers, and makes it sound pathological. This shows the extent to which Potter can only see the world in terms of money and profit.
