Downton Abbey Christmas Special 2012 Quotes

The highlands at Duneagle

Lady Mary: Darling, this isn’t 1850. No one expects me to hide indoors until the baby is born.

Lady Edith: We’d be thrilled to see you. It just seems like an awfully long way to come for a walk.

Anna: It feels like a holiday doesn’t it.
O’Brien: Don’t worry, it won’t feel like a holiday once we get there.

Downton Staff leave for Duneagle, Scotland

Joss TUften: I’ve not had food that good since the last time I were in London.
Mrs. Patmore: Well I’m not just a pretty face.

Shrimpy’s man: His lordship was born with a rod in one hand and a gun in the other.
Shrimpy: That sounds rather uncomfortable.

Countess Violet and Susan Fletcher

Countess Violet: Do you know where it will be?

Lady Flincher: No. It will be filthy and dirty. The food will be awful. There will be no one to talk to for 100 square miles.
Countess Violet: That sounds like a week with my mother in law.

Countess Violet: No one can accuse me of being modern but even I can see it’s no crime to be young.

Edna: You refused to dress the part, but you do now.
Branson: I was tired of talking about my clothes every time I came down the stairs. I’m still the same man inside.

Carson: I can’t let them go galavanting off to every fair at the drop of a hat. I mean what are we paying them for?

Carson: I don’t believe it, must I be undermined at every turn?

Matthew: What a disappointment, he looks perfectly normal!
Lady Mary: Since he came here with the express purpose of dining at Duneagle, he obviously brought a set of tails.

Lord Grantham: It puzzles me why you choose to employ amateurs like my daughter.

Lord Grantham and Shrimpy Fletcher

Bates: My whole childhood would seem impossible to you milady. But I survived and so will you.

Michael Gregson: Edith, my basic fact is that I’m in love with you. You know that already.

Countess Violet: Edith dear, stop fascinating that young man and come and make a four at bridge.

Carson: Don’t envy me Mrs Hughes. You know what they say. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Mrs. Patmore: No man’s wanted to squire me since the Golden Jubilee. Even then he expected me to buy the drinks.

Bates: Beer, that’s very racy of you.
Anna: I am racy.

Bates and Anna enjoy a racy picnic

Lord Grantham: The Marlboroughs have got a divorce and you still see them around.

Shrimpy Flincher: We don’t like each other.

Classic Countess Violet

Countess Violet: And all the costumes of imperial rule are always so unpeculiarly unsuited to the climate.

Countess Violet: Unless you want her married to a third rate colonial official, with no money and bad teeth, you better think again.

Joss Tufton: I hope you don’t mind my saying so Mrs Patmore, but in that blouse you look as though you just stepped off the pages of Vogue.

Joss Tufton: I love to be in love Mrs. Hughes. I’ll not deny it. Anytime. Anyplace. I love to be in love.

Countess Violet: That is the thing about nature, there is so much of it.

Michael Gregson: I’m prevented from divorcing a woman who doesn’t even know who I am. Does the law expect me to have no life at all until I die? Would Lord Grantham?

Matthew: You’ve been mislead by our surroundings. We’re not in a novel by Walter Scott.

Matthew Crawley tells Michael Gregson what's what

Joss Tufton: Taking orders from a husband’s got to be better than some jumped up Lord or Lady.

Isobel: With good friends like you I enjoy my life as it is and I wouldn’t want to risk things by changing it.

Lady Flincher: She looks like a slut.
Countess Violet: Heavens, that’s not a word you often hear among the heather.

Countess Violet: Poor soul. It’s bad enough parenting a child when you like each other.

Shrimpy: We weren’t madly in love but there was a job to be done and we both believed in it. Then the children came along and for years we hardly had time to think…. We started to learn just how little we had in common.

Mrs Patmore: It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to share my seat on the bus let alone my heart and home.

Lord Grantham: They do say there’s a wild man inside of all of us.
Countess Violet: If only he would stay inside.

Mrs. Hughes: You let Edna make you ashamed of your new life. But you’ve done well. And Lady Sybil would be so proud.

Branson still misses Lady Sybil

Mrs. Hughes: There are rules to this way of life Edna. If you’re not prepared to live by them, then it’s not the right life for you.

Lord Grantham: Downton will survive because of Matthew’s vision.

Shrimpy Fletcher: Love is like riding or speaking French. If you don’t learn it young, it’s hard to get the trick of it later.

Lady Mary: Just think, we’ve done our duty. Downton is safe. Papa must be dancing a jig.

Matthew: I feel like I swallowed a box of fireworks.

Countess Violet: We don’t always get our just desserts.

Wild Rose from Downton Abbey