Reply #141: At its best, the show has a Shakesperean eloquence....

[MrBenchley]

I'm hooked on it...

Here's some more...

Alma Garrett's husband bought a phony gold claim from Al Swearignen, and asked Wild Bill Hickock to get it back for him. Bill refused, but warned him that Swearingen was a dangerous man. Garrett paid no mind, and was killed (ironically, his death revealed that the claim wasn't phony after all, but was a bonanza). Alma herself then asked Hickock to help get the money back:

Wild Bill Hickok: You know the sound of thunder, Mrs. Garret?
Alma Garret: Of course.
Wild Bill Hickok: Can you imagine that sound if I asked you to?
Alma Garret: Yes, I can, Mr. Hickok.
Wild Bill Hickok: Your husband and me had this talk, and I told him to head home to avoid a dark result. But I didn't say it in thunder. Ma'am, listen to the thunder.

Al and another crooked saloon owner look over the town:
Al Swearengen: Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek.
Cy Tolliver: But that would be wrong.


Wild Bill Hickok: Some goddamn point a man's due to stop arguing with his-self and feeling twice the goddamn fool he knows he is 'cause he can't be something he tries to be every goddamn day without once getting to dinnertime and fucking it up. I don't want to fight it anymore, understand me Charlie? And I don't want you pissing in my ear about it. Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?

A character named Mose Manuel shot his brother Charlie to death so he could sell his gold claim to Hearst's combine, as represented by a geologist (and sexually compulsive serial killer) named Wolcott. Later he is cheated out of his ill-gotten gains by Cy Tolliver, working in cahoots with Wolcott. When he demands the money he's lost gambling back...
Wolcott: Including youth, Mr. Manuel? And why not beauty? Not credibly restored, perhaps, but as a new non-negotiable term? Would you not have, too, your brother Charlie resurrected? Would you stipulate your envy of him being purged? Surely, you insist that Charlie retain certain defects - his ineffable self-deceptions, for example, which were your joy in life to rebuke, and purpose, so far as you had one. I suppose you would see removed those qualities which caused you to love him, and the obliviousness to danger which allowed you to shed his blood.

While musing on his latest set of murders, Wolcott is confronted with the county commissioner...
Wolcott: I am a sinner that does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.

http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0348914/quotes

http://www.hbo.com/deadwood/