[speaking to Best and Chief Inspector Abberline] She was never Ripper, that girl. But you two... [to Best] You for profit... [to Abberline] You for guilt, I suspect, wanted it so. Now I ask us to undertake this. That we find a little joy in his continued absence, that we cease to look for him in every act of evil that crosses our path. There is an abundance of that hereabout and I would have obsession blinker us to the wider world no longer. Am I understood?
All S1
Characters
Edmund ReidMatthew Macfadyen · 17 quotes
Homer JacksonAdam Rothenberg · 8 quotes
Bennet DrakeJerome Flynn · 7 quotes
Long SusanMyAnna Buring · 4 quotes
CIChief Inspector Abberline3 quotes
Isaac BloomJustin Avoth · 3 quotes
Rose ErskineCharlene McKenna · 3 quotes
Most scenes together: Edmund Reid & Bennet Drake (3), Edmund Reid & Isaac Bloom (3), Edmund Reid & Homer Jackson (2)
S1 E15Unfinished Business
FAFred Abberline
Edmund, this last year, that lunatic will ever bind me to you but you ask too much. He lives still, he breathes this air still. These streets demand your vigilance.
No. We did everything in our power, used every instrument allowed to us, some that were not. All that we can hope for now is that he is gone and stays gone. He will own my life no more.
DGDeborah Goren
Children. Men say some are born evil, others blameless. The truth, in my experience, is simpler. They are mirrors, as evil or as innocent as the world that gives life to them. And this world, I need not to tell you this, this world is a wicked one.
DGDeborah Goren
I am a secular woman, Inspector. I have seen too much of the truth of things for it to be otherwise. Yet this of my faith I have kept: "Save one life, and you save the world entire."
[Susan enters Jackson's room and finds him shirtless]
Have you lost the last of your addled wits?
No. I, uh... forensicate myself.
Might a woman ask why?
If she swears to serenity.
Morning to you.
PPreacher
And to yourself.
[sees the almost empty street] You are alone here?
PPreacher
The world hides in fright when there's rumor of cholera.
But not yourself?
PPreacher
No, sir. I make my home where other men's fear lies. I fight it for them.
Then you are welcome here.
ISDetective Inspector Sidney Ressler
Reid, I cannot help but think the man's further excesses, his need to move beyond that initial batch... Dozens have perished, your wife almost among them... Had I not bowed to pressure to keep those bodies secret, the public knowledge of those deaths might have been enough to sate his madness.
Word of advice, Ressler. This work we perform, it does not serve to look backward. This city, wickedness will ever leave its spores here. You and I, we are not magicians. We cannot see through walls or into men's minds. Dozens perished, but hundreds who were ill are now well once more. We fight. We fight with all the skills we may muster. Beyond that, we may do no more.
FBFred Best
Fred Best tells you, he needs something shown in return.
You do as I ask, and I shall give you a story that, though you connive and bribe your way to the Devil himself, it will not be bettered.
FBFred Best
[smiles] Go on.
"How Stanley Bone, secret slumlord, is exposed by the actions of a whore-runner." Corruption and sex, Mr. Best. Surely it does not come more honeyed than that!
LELucy Eames
I know you, Stanley Bone. You proclaim to these good people about the future's gleaming hope, but the tongue you speak with is forked. And the future you speak of, it, it is built on evil and corruption. You had me as your slave, denied our children, had my mother murdered, and you would have sent me to a living hell had it not been for this inspector here. You are no man but you are a beast that has risen deep from the earth in which you dig into.
[talking about Rose's involvement with Drake] It's going to end badly.
Why do you say that?
Jesus Christ, what doesn't?
He needs a doctor. Get Jackson.
CMCol. Madoc Faulkner
Wait, Inspector. You must know that Sergeant Drake was forced, at gunpoint and against his will, to become an accessory to these crimes. He is for his own part as fine a policeman as he was a soldier, and innocent of all wrongdoing. And Inspector, when you return to your home this eve, give thanks to your god you will never set eyes upon the things I have witnessed. The bravest of men butchered like pigs. Sons and brothers in their hundreds left for carrion. Dirt beetles crawling at feast in their torn hollows... and all for queen and country. [tugs off his scarab necklace and looks at it] The Egyptians were fools. How can any god presume to know the weight of one man's heart?
[Faulkner draws his derringer from behind his back...]
NO-!
[...and shoots himself.]
Galileo said mathematics was the language which God has written the universe. I seek the hidden words. You might term it a kind of detective work.
In my detective work I find little evidence of God.
But you seek order in all things, Inspector. The notion of meaningless chaos is abhorrent to you.
Joshua was right. Justice has become a commodity. Is this the shadow of what is to be, Inspector? My brother used to say the future belongs to men of reason, not of faith.
On that I would agree with him.
And mathematics tells us something different. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. You understand?
A little.
Disorder, Inspector. Everything from the smallest system to our entire world moves always, irretrievably, from order into chaos. And there is nothing to be done about it. Do you share that belief?
No.
Then perhaps you are a man of faith after all.
I do work with one advantage, however.
FGFrank Goodnight
Wanna tell me?
It's my home field.
[He tilts his his cigarette case, shining the sunlight into Frank's eyes and spoiling his one and only shot. Jackson raises his own pistol and advances on him.]
FGFrank Goodnight
Always were a faker.
You shouldn't have killed the boy, Frank. [shoots him]
[to Jackson] I never knew a man who made cheating seem so heroic.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Ripper Street pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.