In those days everything was bad for your eyes. Not wearing mittens was bad for your eyes. Wearing rubbers in the house, that would strike you blind right on the spot.
All S1
S1 E15Unfinished Business
Either there was no motive at all like in those crazy kind of murders that you read about in the newspaper. Or there was a very good motive, one that makes terrific sense. And that's what keeps going around in my mind-- motive.
Well, there's something that I don't understand, ma'am, and maybe I should. Uh, I probably should. Lord knows I'm not the brightest guy on the force. Another detective, he could cut right through this.
You're a fascinating man, Lieutenant.
To a psychologist, sir?
You pass yourself off as a puppy in a raincoat happily running around the yard digging holes all up in the garden, only you're laying a mine field and wagging your tail.
Very good, Lieutenant. Remarkable, really. You take control very well, all the way. I'd swear you'd taken my course.
Oh no, sir. Oh no, never. It's just that I enjoy the pleasure of the game.
Very simple case. Not that I'm particularly bright, sir. I must say I found you disappointing, I mean your incompetence. You left enough clues to sink a ship.
Oh, you killed him with a phone call, sir. I'll bet my life on it.
Really, you have a morbid streak, Lieutenant. I should have suspected that.
Thank you very much, sir. I'll explain to Mrs. Columbo how my condition is work dominated.
Well, I think she might have guessed.
JDJoe 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."
Well, sir, you pretended to raise money to help the Irish victims and all the while you were planning to make more victims. Wasn't that a pretense, sir?
JDJoe Devlin
Politics makes liars of us all, Lieutenant.
There once was a fella named Finnegan,
Who escaped from a jail, so to sin again
He broke laws by the dozen,
He even stole from his cousin,
So the jail he broke outta he's in again.
There once was an old man from Lyne. He took three wives at a time. When asked why a third, he said, "One is absurd, and two of them, sir, is a crime."
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.
A rare old bird is the pelican. His beak can hold 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!
JDJoe Devlin
We execute traitors, Mr. Pauley. Didn't you know that?
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Columbo pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.