- [Copley-Barnes is describing the priceless Saxon exhibits which have been stolen from his college, and belittles DS Jakes who doesn't know what he is talking about]
- Dr. Matthew Copley-Barnes: [patronisingly] Strangely enough, I can't imagine that a working knowledge of the Historia Ecclesiastica looms large in the Hendon curriculum.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I can't imagine it would do us very much good if it did.
- Dr. Matthew Copley-Barnes: I beg your pardon.
- DC Endeavour Morse: The Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, to give it its full title, appeared 335 years before the events with which this exhibition is concerned took place. Venerable the Bede may have been, but not clairvoyant.
- [Copley-Barnes looks first gobsmacked and then annoyed that he has met someone who knows even more than himself]
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Multiple catastrophic injuries, to you, to be going on with. Chapter and verse once I've had a rummage.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Nothing suspicious?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Only you.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I was wrong, spectacularly so. Worse still, I was disrespectful to you, to Inspector Thursday and to Sergeant Jakes and for that I apologize unreservedly.
- Chief Superintendent Bright: Uh, you, you were not not yourself.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Thank you for saying so, sir, but I suspect the truth is I was myself all too much.
- Monica: When your friend brought you home the other night, I didn't see a coward; just a man beat up too often and for too long maybe. You're not yellow; you're just blue.
- DI Fred Thursday: I'm all for a beer at lunchtime. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you're on duty with me, you'll lay off the spirits. I've seen too many go that way.
- DC Endeavour Morse: What way?
- DI Fred Thursday: You think I missed all the bottles around your flat? Six months, you'll have enough off the empties to put down for a second-hand car. Booze can be a good servant, Morse, but it's a lousy master.
- Val Todd: [justifying his percentage of Diana Day's earnings] Like the man said - it's "show business", not "show friendship".
- Joan Thursday: You've lost weight. What have they been feeding you out at Witney?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Mockery and humiliation, mostly.
- [last lines]
- DI Fred Thursday: Copley-Barnes gave me an earful. Said he'd remember *you*.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Vainglorious fool like that? Doubt it. Too self-obsessed by half. I can't help feeling like I've missed something.
- DI Fred Thursday: You have. Your round. And it wouldn't be the first time. You don't want to let a little tripe-hound like Todd bother you.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I'm not.
- DI Fred Thursday: Good. Right.
- [unwraps sandwich]
- DC Endeavour Morse: Luncheon meat.
- DI Fred Thursday: [confronting Mallory] Soho. This afternoon. You and your pal had a high old time at the expense of one of mine. Suppose you tell me what it was all about?
- Mallory: Suppose we don't.
- DI Fred Thursday: Then I'll have to take off my hat.
- PC Jim Strange: I've been invited to a meet and greet this evening. With a view to being initiated into a certain ancient fraternity. We haven't all got your brain, matey. Never will have. Some of us need a leg up.
- DC Endeavour Morse: A man can't serve two masters. Sooner or later, you'll have to choose. Just don't lose your way. It's easily done.
- Dorothea Frazil: [after Morse has expressed contempt for the beauty contest] It's only a bit of fun, Morse.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Oh, yes, it's all fun. Till the music stops.
- Chief Superintendent Bright: How is he? I ask with no side.
- DI Fred Thursday: He's young. He'll mend.
- Dorothea Frazil: What do you hear?
- DC Endeavour Morse: I hear very little.
- Dorothea Frazil: And divulge even less.
- DI Fred Thursday: [dismissing Val Todd] His sort's nowt a pound - and shit's tuppence. That's what my grandma used to say. Northerner.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [on the contents of the dead man's stomach] The full English - about an hour before he put Sir Isaac's law of universal gravitation to the test.
- Dorothea Frazil: [meeting Morse for the first time after his return from "general duties"] Hello, stranger. They let you out, then?
- DC Endeavour Morse: [grimly] Good behavior.
- Dorothea Frazil: [amused surprise] You?
- DC Endeavour Morse: [after being ordered to take sick leave] A few days off? I just got back!
- DI Fred Thursday: Does it sound like a request?
- Val Todd: You really don't have a clue, do you? You cross these people, they will bring you down - but not before they've destroyed everything you hold dear. Colleagues, friends, family. Every action has its consequences.
- Dr. Matthew Copley-Barnes: One of your uniformed colleagues mentioned in passing that you were an Oxford man. Is that right?
- DC Endeavour Morse: I've always rather despised that phrase.
- [first lines]
- Diana Day: It gives me great pleasure to launch Burridges' Spring into Summer fashion collection.
- PC Jim Strange: Hello, matey. You're a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. Back full time?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Looks like it. What did I miss?
- PC Jim Strange: You heard about my Sergeants', suppose? Three lousy points.
- DC Endeavour Morse: If at first...
- PC Jim Strange: Yeah. Give up.
- Dr. Malcolm Speight: [describing the stolen items] The quality of the objects, together with certain runic inscriptions, suggest they may have belonged to a thane or a high-ranking house-carl in the retinue of King Harold Godwinson.
- PC Jim Strange: King Harold that got it in the eye?
- Dr. Matthew Copley-Barnes: [heavy sarcasm] And people decry the merits of the Secondary Modern! Yes, constable, even he.
- Muriel Todd: [Looking him up and down Dismissively] Can we find him an evening suit?
- DC Endeavour Morse: He has an evening suit.
- [Proudly defiant]
- Tony Frisco: [when Diana lights a cigarette after sex with him] Don't let Muriel catch you.
- Diana Day: Hark who's talking!