- Joe Devlin: You see, at a very early age I decided to be me own master and the servant of no one, and that left two promising possibilities: either to be a king or a poet. Now, as Ireland had her fill of kings, I clearly saw I had to educate meself to a way of words, so I took to drink immediately, fell in love at every opportunity, and avoided the schoolroom like the plague. I advise you to do the same.
- Lt. Columbo: A rare old bird is the pelican. His bill holds more than his belly can. He can take in his beak enough food for a week. I'm damned if I know how the hell he can!
- Lt. Columbo: There once was an old man from Lyme who married three wives at a time. When asked "Why a third?" he replied, "One's absurd, and two of 'em, sir, is a crime."
- Lt. Columbo: There once was a fella named Finnegan, who escaped from a jail so to sin again. He broke laws by the dozen, even stole from his cousin, so the jail he broke outta he's in again.
- Joe Devlin: Justice for the many. Justice for the free. Let each man be paid in full. That's just enough for me.
- Joe Devlin: Do you know these lines, Lieutenant? They're by Lewis Carroll: "You can charge me with murder, or want of sense - we are all of us weak at times - but the slightest approach to a false pretense was never among my crimes."
- Lt. Columbo: [Shocked at the high price of a book] $55 for a book? I could have my car fixed for that.
- Joe Devlin: The limerick is furtive and mean. You must keep her in close quarantine, Or she sneaks to the slums, And promptly becomes, Disorderly, drunk and obscene.
- Lt. Columbo: I couldn't resist trying your pinball machine. I guess I tried a little too hard, but that's an old problem with me, sir. The way I keep steering and pushing and pulling at things, someday the whole sky is gonna light up, and it's gonna say "tilt," and that's gonna be the end of the world.
- Joe Devlin: Here's to friendship, ripe and long. Here's to voices raised in song. Here's to a long and thirsty night. Here's to the stuff that makes it right.
- Joe Devlin: A famous German philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once wrote that the essence of tragedy isn't the conflicts between right and wrong - it's the conflicts of right and right.
- Joe Devlin: Justice for the many, Justice for the free Let each man be paid in full That's just enough for me.
- Lt. Columbo: Excuse me, ma'am. That's a continental stitch, isn't it?
- Kate O'Connell: You do needlepoint, Lieutenant?
- Lt. Columbo: Oh no, not me, ma'am. My nephew's the needlepointer. It seems to relax him before he goes into those weight lifting contests.
- Lt. Columbo: Now, do you notice anything special about these three bottles?
- Joe Devlin: They are, alas, empty.
- Joe Devlin: Here's to friendship ripe and long Here's to voices raised in song Here's to a long and thirsty night Here's to the stuff that makes it right.
- Lt. Columbo: This man Pauley, ma'am. He was found murdered a few days ago. Forgive me ma'am, for being indelicate like that. But you know, all the years that I've been doing this kind of work, I still don't know how to make it sound inoffensive when one person kills another.