Greatest word?
John Cleese: Luxury!
Never performed on the Monty Python show, yet often a staple of their sketch movies with varying casts.
I prefer Claudius’ aside to Drusilla and Herod Agrippa about Caligula.
“He’s become a god. (To Drusilla) Oh and you’re a god too. (To Herod) We’re not.”
Also from I, Claudius: a young relative of the ruling family has been coughing persistently and irritating Caligula.
Young relative: I have a weak chest. It’s not my fault!
Caligula: But it’s YOUR CHEST!
(C. later had the kid beheaded.)
The Carol Burnett Show
“Thank you. I saw it in a window and I just couldn’t resist it.”
Buffy:
“She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.”
Paraphrased, from WKRP in Cincinnati; spoken by Johnny Fever:
“When everybody is after you, being paranoid is just good common sense.”
The boy’s name was Gemellus. IIRC, he was another of Tiberius’s adopted sons.
Claudius was horrified when he saw Gemellus’s severed head and asked who it was.
Caligula: (Nonchalantly) It’s Gemellus. I’ve cured his cough.
While the I, Claudius ones are all great, none of them quite beats Livia’s comment to Tiberius following Augustus’s death - ‘By the way, don’t touch the figs.’ Brilliant punchline to the most remarkable scene in the whole series.
Good choice. I’d forgotten about that one.
This may be a little long for a “single greatest line”, but the I, Claudius references brought this to my mind:
Senator: There are those who say you cannot hear properly, you cannot speak properly, and that you’ve got no experience of government
Claudius: And that I am besides half-witted. Senators, it is true that I am hard of hearing, but you will find it is not for want of listening. As for speaking, again, it’s true I have an impediment. But isn’t what a man says more important than how long he takes to say it? It’s true again I have little experience of government. But then, have you more? I at least have lived with the imperial family who has ruled this empire ever since you so spinelessly handed it over to us. I’ve observed it working more closely than any of you. Is your experience better than that? As for being half-witted, well, what can I say - except that I have survived to middle age with *half* my wits, while thousands have died with *all* of theirs intact. Evidently, *quality* of wits is more important than *quantity*. Senators, I shall do nothing unconstitutional; I shall appear at the next session of the senate where you may confirm me in my position or not as you wish. But if it pleases you not to, explain your reasons to them [points at the Praetorians]
Claudius: Not to me.
Felix’s finger-wagging Odd Couple trope “Let it be on your head, Oscar.”
(also) “hehnck, mengck, mengck, honk…” (Felix’s sinuses acting up)
A little long? It is thirteen lines in a long paragraph.
Another one from The Odd Couple, “You should never assume, because when you assume, you make an ass of you and me.”
I remember that courtroom scene!
In that scene, preferring Oscar’s chalkboard scold “It’s bail, before jail, so, you better not fail!”
Another from BtVS:
Buffy: What are you doing here, Spike? 5 words or less.
Spike: Out. For. A. Walk… Bitch.
Shower jokes in The Simpsons.
1. Marge to Homer:
“I don’t mind you peeing in the shower as long as you’re taking a shower.”
2. Thinking the alien in the shower is Marge, Homer asks if she wants some company:
“I’ll take your silence for consent.”
3. I can’t remember the line after Homer gets in the shower with the alien, but it had something to do with a tentacle and the Hershey Highway.
WILLOW: “How’d it go?”
XANDER: “On a scale of one to ten? It sucked.”
And, of course, I’ll be in my bunk.
I know it’s Firefly but I’ve forgotten what spurred it.
Kaylee and Jayne watching Inara welcome her new, female client.