“There are spirits….they are all around us…they have driven me from hearth and home…from wife and child.”
These are the opening intertitles, and they set the mood for the film. The man's words have all the earmarks of a paranoid fantasy and the old man echoes this idea with this line. As he tells Francis, the lines between reality and illusion are indistinct.
"What she and I have lived through is stranger still than what you have lived through."
This is Francis's response to the old man, after they have seen the wide-eyed Jane walk past. With this line, Francis sets up the entire story of the film, and promises that it will be uncanny and not-to-be-believed. He makes a promise that his story is particularly unusual.
“Step right up! Presenting for the first time: Cesare the somnambulist! The miraculous Cesare. Twenty-three years old, he has slept for twenty-three years continuously, day and night! Right before your eyes, Cesare will awaken from his death-like trance.”
Caligari makes this bold monologue to introduce the sleepwalker, Cesare. He tells us Cesare's story, that he has been asleep for his entire life, and makes the promise that he, as Cesare's master, is the only one who can wake him from his trance.
“I will not rest until I have got to the bottom of these terrible events.”
Francis says this after the woman has told him about the murder of his good friend Alan. He runs to the police station, his eyes wide with distress, and says this to them. This line shows both his commitment to solving the murder of his friend, but also, in light of how the film ends, foreshadows some of his mad fanaticism.
“It can't have been Cesare. Cesare was asleep all the time. I have been watching him for hours.”
This is an example of dramatic irony. The audience knows it is true that Francis has been watching Cesare sleep all night, but also just saw that Cesare is indeed the one who abducted Jane. One must be right and the other must be wrong, or else Cesare must also be capable of multiplying himself.
“In the year 1703, a mystic by the name of Dr. Caligari, together with a somnambulist called Cesare, used to frequent the fairgrounds…”
Things are starting to make sense, or perhaps not. What is becoming clear is that Caligari is certainly not the person he claims to be. Francis and the other doctors at the asylum pore over the books in Caligari's office while he is sleeping and find this history book. It explains the historical existence of a man whom Caligari the asylum director seems to be trying to completely emulate in his own life.
“You all believe I am mad. That is not true. It is the Director who is mad.”
Francis utters this line at the end of the film, after it is revealed that he is a patient at the asylum. This quote can be understood several ways. It can be taken to refer specifically to the director of the asylum, Caligari, who Francis believes has wrongly locked him up in the asylum. But it may also be a subtle indicator to the audience not to believe the version of events that the director of the film, Robert Wiene, is trying to put across as the truth. This double meta-theatrical meaning further complicates the definition of reality as presented by the film, and asks the audience to consider: Who has the authority, and why?
"I must know everything. I must penetrate the heart of his secret! I must become Caligari!"
This is spoken by Caligari in a kind of flashback, which depicts how he came to be obsessed with becoming the murderous Dr. Caligari. With this line, we see that the asylum director's ambitions are loftier than simply emulating the actions of a historical figure; indeed, he wants to also "know everything" and actually become Caligari. Furthermore, he sees this process as a kind of penetration; the act of becoming someone else is the process of traveling into their spirit and essence and taking over for them. With this line, we see the fanaticism of Dr. Caligari, the intensity of his aspirations.
Alan: How long have I to live?
Cesare: Until tomorrow's dawn.
When Alan and Francis go to the fair, they wander into Dr. Caligari's tent, and the malevolent ringmaster coaxes the famous prophetic sleepwalker out of his cabinet. The earnest and wide-eyed Alan does not hesitate to step up and ask the somnambulist a question about his future, namely, when he will die. Without hesitating, Cesare tells him that he will die by the morning, which, understandably, frightens Alan.
"We who are of noble blood may not follow the wishes of our hearts."
After Francis is revealed to be a patient at the insane asylum, he goes in to the courtyard and approaches Jane. In Francis' story, Jane is an attractive and sane woman with whom Francis is in love. While he acts as though Jane is still that girl from the story, her response now reveals that she is also an insane person, who believes that she is a queen, of noble blood.
