- Horace Rumpole: [Looking at a wine label and addressing Hearthstoke with disdain] Oh, dear! "Méthode Champenoise!" You disappoint me, Hearthrug!
- Phyllida 'Portia' Erskine-Brown: Actually, Charles, it's quite delicious.
- Horace Rumpole: What? Grape juice and gas?
- [With sarcasm]
- Horace Rumpole: Wait for the headache!
- Phyllida 'Portia' Erskine-Brown: [to Cyril, her client] Oh, you know Rumpole's advising Dennis. "Don't let us cut each other's throats, old darling. Honour among thieves." All that sort of nonsense.
- Cyril Timson: What are you sayin'?
- Phyllida 'Portia' Erskine-Brown: Well, you are a thief, Mr. Timson!
- Cyril Timson: That is very true.
- Phyllida 'Portia' Erskine-Brown: But you aren't a gunman!
- Cyril Timson: On my baby's head I'm not!
- Claude Erskine-Brown: How old's your baby?
- Cyril Timson: Thirty-one - in window cleanin'.
- [talking about Den and Cyril Timson's attempt to break into a bank]
- Horace Rumpole: Their crime was ridiculously ambitious. They're not bank robbers. They should have stuck to thieving frozen fish from the cash-and-carry. It's like the two ends of a pantomime horse getting together to play Hamlet.
- [while Rumpole is cross-examining a witness, Judge Bullingham keeps interrupting, anticipating and elaborating on the points that the witness is making]
- Horace Rumpole: [sarcastically] We are so much obliged to the learned judge for his most helpful interjections, aren't we, Inspector? Otherwise you might have to think of the answers for yourself.