Inspector Morse Quotes

He was somewhat of a loner by temperament--because though never wholly happy when alone, he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people.

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse

I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination.

Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. "It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body - a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body.

I'm not good with the low-level unexplained. I worry at such things. I'm quite relaxed about the great mysteries of the universe; when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of Inspector Morse, I'll find out what's going on eventually.

Inspector Morse, Taggart, Lewis, Foyle’s War, Endeavour, A Touch of Frost, Luther, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Cracker, Broadchurch and even bloody Maigret and Wallander – British TV would disappear into a dot on the screen without murder.

This was exactly why holidays were so valuable, he told himself: they allowed you to stand back a bit, and see where you were going rusty.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them (Frank Moore Colby)

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew): Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. (RUDYARD KIPLING)

During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance.

It is strange to relate (for a man in his profession) that in addition to incurable acrophobia, arachnophobia, myophobia, and ornithophobia, Morse also suffered from necrophobia; and had he known what awaited him now, it is doubtful whether he would have dared to view the horridly disfigured corpse at all.

My life will not be significantly impoverished if I never see another Shakespearian comedy.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. (SAMUEL JOHNSON)

He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway.

The secret of a happy life, Lewis, is to know when to stop and then to go that little bit further.

...though I am still...exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours.

As a boy, he had been moved by those words of the dying Socrates, suggesting that if death were just one long, unbroken, dreamless sleep, then a greater boon could hardly be bestowed upon mankind.

Morse poured himself a can of beer. "Champagne's a lovely drink, but it makes you thirsty, doesn't it?

He sighed and knew that life was full of ‘if only’ for everyone

A man is little use when his wife’s a widow. Scottish proverb

Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs. "You still sex-mad, I see, Morse," said the surgeon. "I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max." Morse turned over a page. "And you don't improve much either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.

Those who are absent, by its means become present: correspondence is the consolation of life. —VOLTAIRE, Philosophical Dictionary

Inspector Morse, Taggart, Lewis, Foyle’s War, Endeavour, A Touch of Frost, Luther, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Cracker, Broadchurch and even bloody Maigret and Wallander –

You’re joking. Inspector Morse, Taggart, Lewis, Foyle’s War, Endeavour, A Touch of Frost, Luther, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Cracker, Broadchurch and even bloody Maigret and Wallander

As he lay abed on Sunday, 21 September, Morse was beset by the nagging feeling that there was so much to be done if only he could summon up the mental resolve to begin. It was like deferring a long-promised letter; the intention lay on the mind so heavily that the simple task seemed progressively to assume almost gigantic proportions.

Nothing quite like it in the whole history of music," announced Morse magisterially, after Brünnhilde had ridden into the flames and the waves of the Rhine had finally rippled into silence. "You think so?" "Don't you?" "I prefer Elizabethan madrigals, really." For a few moments Morse said nothing, saddened by her lack of sensitivity, it seemed.

Was he really looking forward to it? They were usually a bit of anticlimax, these things. Stillit would do him good. Or serve him right

Morse firmly believed that there was nothing so unsatisfactory as this kind of pornography; he liked it hot or not at all.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody ( Joseph Heller, Catch

He poured himself a good measure of Glenfiddich; and shortly thereafter fell deeply asleep in the chair for more than two hours. Bliss.

Facing the media is more difficult than bathing a leper. —MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA

wailing like a dalek in distress

was virtually certain of that. As the coach drew into St. Giles’, the sky was an open blue, and the sunlight gleamed on the cinnamon-coloured stone along the broad tree-lined avenue. “Here we are, in St. Giles.’ ” (Ashenden slipped into over-drive now.) “You can see the plane trees on either side of us, ablaze with the beautifully golden tints of autumn—and, on the left here, St. John’s College—and Balliol just beyond. And here in front of us, the famous Martyrs’ Memorial, modelled on the Eleanor Crosses of Edward the First, and designed by Gilbert Scott to honour the great Protestant martyrs—Cranmer and Latimer and, er …” “Nicholas Ridley,” supplied Mrs. Roscoe, as the coach turned right at the traffic lights and almost immediately pulled in on the left of Beaumont Street beneath the tall neo-Gothic façade of The Randolph Hotel. “At last!” cried Laura Stratton, with what might have been

you’ve never seen any evidence of drugs—any packets of drugs? Crack? Speed? Ecstasy? Anything? Anything at all?” Had she? “No,” she said. Almost truthfully. “You’ve never smelt anything suspicious?” “I wouldn’t know what they smell like, drugs,

and Lewis felt excitement, and gratification. Somebody—some

Beer barrel, though.

was with Ashenden that Morse’s attention was immediately

summed up so well that it came to far more    Than the

the coolness of the wall mirror. He

It’s good to hope; it’s the waiting that spoils it (Yiddish

post hoc, propter hoc

Morse, he knew, had the maddeningly brilliant facility for seeing his way through the dark labyrinths of human motive and human behaviour...

I’ve ordered Janáček, the Glagolitic Mass—you may not know it. Splendid work—beautifully recorded by Simon Rattle. And Richard Strauss, Four Last Songs—Jessye Norman. I’ve got several recordings by other sopranos, of course.

for whatever

But he'd realized too, at the same time, that his capacity for jealousy was pretty nearly boundless.

Maximum mental energy' had never been Kevin's strong point.

this man with the hard-staring, startling eyes – eyes that had at first reminded her of the more fanatical politicians, like Benn or Joseph or Powell,

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the one before. G. K. Chesterton

when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of Inspector Morse, I’ll find out what’s going on eventually.

It had been at the height of the summer heat-wave of 1995. One day when she had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially tolerate, she had seen in Strange’s eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?) were the signs of some mild, erotic fantasy. ‘You look very desirable, my girl!’ That’s all he said. Was that what people meant by ‘sexual harassment

Bond, James, read all the messages.

Phobias were common enough. Some people suffee from arachnophobia, or hysphobia, or myophobia, or pterophobia... Well-nigh everyone suffers occasionally from thanatophobia; many from necrophobia — although Morse was not really afraid of dead bodies at all, or so he told himself.

Sometimes procedures worked well; and sometimes (as now) there was every reason for the police to be congratulated on the way situations were handled. On this occasion one thing only (perhaps two?) had marred police professionalism.

Another private detective can be easy to watch inside her official office.

Money often costs too much. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is little use when his wife's a widow. - Scottish Proverb

The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop and then to go that little bit further.

and one letter was protruding precariously

Barrington Pheloung’s introductory theme-music was a splendid opening, with its fusion of a fine melody with the ‘da-ditty-da’ rhythm of the Morse code.

high-church atheist” (as I called him), yet with a deep love for the Methodist Hymnal, the King James’ Bible, the church music of Byrd, Tallis, Purcell, etc, the sight of candles, and the smell of incense.

Initium est dimidium facti (the beginning is one half of the deed), as the Roman proverb has it.

tell a story that would entertain whatever readers might be coming my way.

Perhaps my one wholly legitimate claim to notoriety is that single-handedly I have made Oxford the murder capital of the UK—and probably of the EU.

Boustrophedon.

Beware of all enterprises that require fancy clothes. (THOREAU)

During the times in which these events are set, there occurred a quite spectacular renaissance in fancy-dress occasions.

The room was cold as the grave.

Man kann den Wald nicht vor Baümen sehen.

I do so love books. I can’t think of many truer pleasures than settling into a fat armchair, letting my mouth fall open, and reading a novel. And I mean really reading one – not just skim-reading it before a live TV interview, or pretending to read Middlemarch while smiling sagely to look more attractive in a departure lounge – genuinely reading. For me, books aren’t just a feast for the eyes. I love the feel of books: the flaps of reformed pulp nestling compliantly in the crook of my hand, my fingers tracing their supple spines; I love the sound of books – I don’t mean audiobooks, I don’t like audiobooks, I’ve never liked audiobooks: If I want to hear Sam West reading Inspector Morse out loud I’ll go to one of his garden parties; no, I’ll only allow audiobooks if you’re operating heavy machinery or are just plain blind (and don’t forget they have been given braille) – I mean the sound of a book: The moth-like thrum of flicked pages, the gedoink of a thudding tome as it lands on a bedside table. But most of all, I love the stench of books; the thick odour that leaps from their pages. If I’m feeling a little low and I’m in a library, I’ve been known to open a book (just a little), slot my nose into its tempting crevice, and inhale a deep whiff of book until my eyes roll back in their sockets and I have to lie down in a section where no-one goes (such as African literature). For me, nothing beats the delight of quietly slipping my nose into the crack of a Brontë or A Few Good Men and letting the aroma tantalise my olfactory nerve endings. Oh, the smell! Oh! The! Smell! The trusty, musty, dusty, fusty, crusty, and (if it’s a Jilly Cooper) busty and lusty smell of literature!

As he lay abed on Sunday, 21 September, Morse was beset by the nagging feeling that there was so much to be done if only he could summon up the mental resolve to begin.

no burdens were shed – they were merely passed from the shoulders of one to those of another.

But quietly now, rather movingly, Strange was making his plea: "Christ knows why, Lewis, but he'll always put himself out a bit for you. Did you realize that?

Like so many fictional detectives, Sergeant Cuff is given a hobby to cover up this essential blankness at his centre. Just as Inspector Morse is really little more than a hyper-intelligent and grumpy collection of hobbies (beer-drinking, opera and crossword puzzles), Sergeant Cuff’s central preoccupation is gardening.

The true index of a man’s character is the health of his wife

All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy

He’d once read (or heard)—Disraeli, was it? (or Jimmy Bowden?)—that a man ought never to apologize; never to explain. He did neither

You see, it is all logic and the applications of logic.

Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN)

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom (H. L. MENCKEN)

Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his trouble begins (Old nursery rhyme)

The total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution (BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals)

Prosōpagnoia (n.): the failure of any person to recognize the face of any other person, howsoever recently the aforementioned persons may have mingled in each other’s company (Small’s Enlarged English Dictionary, 13th Edition, 1806)

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack)

Once cheated, wife or husband feels the same; and where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack)