- Alfonso d'Este: We must make a public decree condemning Cesare.
- Lucrezia Borgia: Never.
- Alfonso d'Este: To risk even the appearance of alliance with Cesare is to gamble with our lives. Our son's life. Our entire duchy.
- Lucrezia Borgia: I would sooner kill our son.
- Alfonso d'Este: How can you say that?
- Lucrezia Borgia: Better him dead that alive in a world where a sister betrays her brother.
- Cesare Borgia: Any good lawyers knows that a trial begins, not when the court is convened, but the moment the accused is accused.
- Giulia Farnese: [testifying] Cesare was born a perversion of nature. My brother has time and again attempted to save his friend. Even here, now, he tries. Always for naught. Cesare's a disease.
- Niccolo Machiavelli: How so?
- Giulia Farnese: Oh, in a very literal sense, he has the French disease. How many whores did you sleep with Cesare.
- Cesare Borgia: [through his gag] Only you!
- Alessandro Farnese: [kneeling at the cross] How am I supposed to do what is right, when I do not know what is wrong?
- Lucrezia Borgia: You are the representative of Jesus Christ on earth. Why do you allow your hatred and envy for my father to lead you to sin?
- Giuliano della Rovere: Not sin. Syncopy. One must strike out all traces of one's predecessor, otherwise we will be tied to his precedents, and our successes will be based on *his* legacy. We do this, not for ourselves, but for the spiritual rebirth of the church.
- Lucrezia Borgia: You shoot at conflicting targets, Holiness. The purpose of spirituality to expand one's life. The purpose of religion is to limit it.
- Giulia Farnese: Lucrezia, not everyone can be rescued. There are people who doom themselves, and there is nothing you can do but remember them.
- [last lines]
- Alfonso d'Este: You would sooner kill our son than denounce Cesare. Your words, yes? You got your wish. Our baby has died...