Downton Abbey Christmas Special Quotes

Isobel insinuates that Countess Violet is a ballbuster.

Isobel: “It’s a nutcracker… we thought you’d like it… to crack your nuts.”

Lady Mary: “We are all under the shadow of Bate’s trial”

Thomas: “We are talking to the dead”

Countess Violet: “Lawyers are always confident before the verdict. It’s only afterwards they share their doubts.”

Lady Rosamund’s maid: “Is Mr. Bates the one Lady Rosamund told me about… the murderer?”

Sir Richard Carlisle: “It’s not how we’ll do it at Hexby”
Countess Violet: “Which I can easily believe…”

Mr. Bates is lonely in prison

Countess Violet: “Sir Richard, life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous”
Sir Richard: “Not my life”
Countess Violet: “How soon your maxim will be tested

Countess Violet: “Hepworth is lonely, I find that hard to believe. Hepworth men don’t go in for loneliness much. I knew his father in the late 60s. Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?” (Where are the snows of yesteryear?)

Countess Violet: “Perhaps he’s had enough banging for one life”

Countess Violet: “Oh, very important. He never used to use a chauffeur.”

Anthony Strallan: “Doe he shoot?”
Edith: “I’m sure he does”
Countess Violet: “But I don’t think pheasants.”

Lady Grantham doles out some common sense

Mr. Bates: “Mr Murray thinks a reference from an Earl will go in my favour. I’m not sure such things matter when it comes to murder”

Anna: “I know it could happen. I do. But the time to face it is after it has happened and not before. Grant me that”

Lord Grantham: “I suspect he’s in the profession of making himself agreeable”

Lord Grantham: “So that’s it then. No return. She’s crossed the rubicon.”
Lady Mary: “She cross it when she married him Robert.”

Lord Grantham: “Well well, we’re to have a Fenian grandchild”
Lady Mary: “Cheer up, come the revolution it may be useful to have a contact on the other side”

Lady Rosamund: “Perhaps it needs a woman’s touch.”
Lord Hepworth: “Don’t we all”

O’Brian: “Make him grateful. Do him a good turn. Hide something he loves and find it and give it back”

Sir Richard: “You haven’t had to fight for what you’ve got”
Lady Mary: “Oh do try to get past that. It makes you sound so angry all the time.”

Countess Violet: “1920. Is it to be believed. I feel as old as Methuselah. When I think what the last ten years has brought. God knows what we’re in for now.”

Lord Hepworth: “You ladies will have to distribute your charms fairly as there are only three of you”

Lady Mary: “I never know which is worse. The sorrow when you hit the bird. Or the shame when you miss it”

Lady Edith: “If you think I’m going to give up on someone who calls me lovely…”

Anthony Strallen has got eyes for Edith

Carson: “Maids at the shooting lodge. Hardly…”

Lord Grantham: “I look at Mary and all I can see is a tired woman with a tiresome husband. Not a bride on the brink of heaven. I wish I could understand why she goes on with it. Do you think there might be some element I’ve overlooked.”

Lord Grantham: “I think I can be relied upon to remember any guest who is found dead in his bed the next morning”.

Count Violet: “Alas, I am beyond impropriety.”

Countess Violet: “No fortune, he’s lucky not to be playing the violin in Leicester Square.”
Lady Rosamund: “I am tired of being alone. And I have money.”
Countess Violet: “He’s a fortune hunter, a pleasant one I admit, but still a fortune hunter.”

Thomas: “We will need a new valet now won’t we?”
O’Brian: “I don’t often feel selfless, but when I listen to you I do.”

Mrs. Patmore: “How can you choose today of all days to complain about your lot. I expect Mr. Bates would rather be wondering about how to keep a roast chicken warm than sitting in a lonely cell facing his maker.”

Lord Grantham: “Do you stay with Carlisle because he has threatened to expose the story of Mr. Pamook dying in your bed?”

Lord Grantham: “I don’t want my daughter to be married to a man who threatens her with ruin. I want a good man for you. A brave man. Find a cowboy in the middle west and bring him back to shake us up a bit. ”

Countess Violet: “But you can’t have been false to him. You were his wife for only half an hour.”

Mr. Bates: “No man can regret loving as I have loved you.”

Carson: “As the widower of a murderer, she will have to get used to a degree of notoriety I’m afraid. And so will we, the house that shelters her.”

Lady Mary: “I’m Tess of the D’Urbervilles to your angel Claire. I have fallen. I am impure.”

Matthew: “Go, stay, you must sack Carlisle. It isn’t worth buying off a month of scandal with a lifetime of misery.”

Matthew: “I never could despise you.”

Daisy: “I’ve never been special to anyone. I were only ever special to William.”

William's dad makes Daisy feel special

Sir Richard: “I’m leaving in the morning Lady Grantham. I doubt we’ll meet again.”
Countess Violet: “Do you promise?”

Matthew: “Sorry about the vase”
Count Violet: “Oh don’t be. It was a wedding present from frightful aunt. I have hated it for half a century”.

Sir Richard: “I loved you you know, more than you knew. And much much more than you loved me.”
Mary: “Then I hope the next woman deserves you more than I did”

Lady Rosamund’s maid: “You know men”
Anna: “And I know women too.”

Lord Hexworth: “My dear, this isn’t what it seems”
Lady Rosamund: “Is there room for misinterpretation?”

Fortune hunter caught with his pants down

Lady Rosamund: “I just can’t stand it when Mama is proved right.”

Lady Mary: “You know yourself we carry more luggage than the porters at Kings Cross.”