Fowler quotes from The Thin Blue Line

Fowler

[about to demonstrate a pickpocket's technique] I'd like to meet the man who can get inside my trousers.

Fowler

The point of Biggles and of Sherlock Holmes is to solve crimes and kill Germans, and by heavens, that should be enough for any man!

Fowler

I've always attempted to keep a mature outlook, but I cannot deny there have been lapses; I once possessed a whoopie cushion. I never deployed it, of course, but the capacity was there.

Fowler

"Joy-riding" is not a term I will allow in my station. Crime is crime, and should not be trivialised. What next? Are we to refer to grievous bodily harm as "fun punching?" Assault with a deadly weapon as "laugh and a stab?"

Fowler

Completing a model of the Forth Bridge - that's what ecstasy is! It makes me sad to see these children today, with their drugs and sex and music, they'll never know the joy a young lad could have sitting alone in his room... With his tool in his hand... tightening his little nuts.

Fowler

Every year, I've gone to the Peter Pan auditions and buckled my swash till my timbers shivered, and every year, I've been presented with seven feet of green foam rubber and informed that my lines are "tick" and "tock".

Fowler

That used to be a decent little corner-shop, which sold string. Any day now, I expect to find my chocolate frog replaced by caramel private parts. Or a strawberry-flavoured lesbian.

Fowler

When I was an adolescent, my idea of a major sensory stimulant was sucking on a fisherman's friend.

Fowler

The problem with old copper tricks, Constable Boyle, is that old coppers know 'em.

Gladstone

I was captain of a pub-quiz side once, sir.

Fowler

Were you really?

Gladstone

Oh yes! I remember telling the lads before our first match, "Memory and detail; let those be our by-words. Memory, memory, memory, detail, detail, detail!"

Fowler

Well, excellent advice, Gladstone. And how did your team fare?

Gladstone

I don't know; I forgot where the pub was.

Fowler

Look at you. I can scarcely believe my eyes. The future of Britain, the cream of a proud nation. God help us! Do you honestly think that any halfway decent Japanese company's going to want to give any of you lot a job? When Mr Mitsubishi is asking himself, "Where shall I construct our new generation of small family hatchbacks?", do you think he's going to say, "I know. We'll go to Britain, where the academic elite are a bunch of idiots in tutus and gorilla masks?" Or will he go to continental Europe, where young people wear Benetton tops and respect authority? Did you ever think of that? Well, I suggest you buck up your ideas, or before long Britain's name will be mud, or worse it'll be Italy. You're not worth charging, just shove off. [they leave; to Goody and Habib] I weep for our country, I really do. Do you know that 12-year-olds in Holland and Belgium can already speak fluent English?

Goody

They're no cleverer than British children, sir. My niece is only 10, and she can speak fluent English.

Fowler

[berating Goody] Your head is just something you keep your hat on, isn't it?

We are not the first, and we won't be the last, couple to have problems with our sex life.

Fowler

We do not have problems.

We do not have a sex life!

Fowler

In which case, I really don't see how there can be a problem with it.

"Gasforth Amateur Drama Society"? What's all that, then? Fannying about in tights?

Fowler

No, Derek. We only "fanny about in tights" when we do Shakespeare. This concerns the annual pantomime. "Robust singers required for the chorus". Interested?

It sounds boring to me. I'd rather have a cup of tea in front of the telly.

Fowler

Of course you would, Derek. That is because you have the soul of an amoeba and the imagination of a Pot Noodle.

Fowler

You're lying, Constable! The evidence you have presented to support your case is so contemptibly slight and circumstantial, one is forced to think it may be no more than a tissue of lies. A corrupt concoction. Well? WELL?!

Fowler

Goody, you are supposed to fix me with a steady manly stare, not snivel like a Frenchman who's caught his baguette in his bicycle spokes.

Goody

(tearfully) I can't help it, sir. You're being so mean!

Fowler

Look, this is an exercise. Do you know what an exercise is?

Goody

It's a running-jumping sort of thing.

Habib

Which came first: the chicken, or the egg?

Goody

I know, I know!

Fowler

Do you, Goody? Then what is the answer?

Goody

Because it wanted to get to the other side.