Maggie Smith credited as playing...
Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
- Sir Richard Carlisle: [watching the family playing its annual gane of charades] Do you enjoy these games in which the player must appear ridiculous?
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Sir Richard, life is a game, where the player must appear ridiculous.
- Sir Richard Carlisle: Not my life.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [entering the room where the fight between Richard and Matthew has just been broken up] Oh, what on Earth's the matter?
- Sir Richard Carlisle: I'm leaving the morning, Lady Grantham; I doubt we'll meet again.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [with satisfaction] Do you promise?
- Matthew Crawley: [regarding broken crockery after his fight with Carlisle] Sorry about the vase.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Don't be, don't be. It was a wedding present from a frightful aunt. I have hated it for half a century.
- Sir Richard Carlisle: [of Bates' lawyer at the table] Is he confident?
- Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham: He seems to be.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [dryly] Lawyers are always confident before the verdict. It is only afterwards they share their doubts.
- Lady Rosamund Painswick: [of Lord Hepworth] I know he has no fortune, if that's what you mean.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: No fortune? He's lucky not to be playing the violin in Leicester Square.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [In reference to having known Lord Hepworth's father in her youth] Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
- [But where are the snows of yesteryear?]
- Sir Richard Carlisle: Why do we have to serve ourselves at luncheon?
- Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: It's a Downton tradition. They have their feast at lunchtime and we have ours in the evening.
- Sir Richard Carlisle: But why can't they eat earlier and serve us like they usually do?
- Lady Mary Crawley: Because it's Christmas Day!
- Sir Richard Carlisle: It's not how we'll do it at Haxby.
- Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Which I can easily believe.