- Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [after a heated exchange between Lord Grantham and Sarah Bunting at a dinner party celebrating his and Cora's 34th wedding anniversary] If you can all put your swords away, perhaps we can finish our dinner in a civilized manner.
- Isobel Crawley: But I admire it when young people stand up for their principles.
- Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Principles are like prayers; noble, of course, but awkward at a party.
- Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: There's nothing simpler than avoiding people you don't like. Avoiding one's friends - that's the real test.
- Mr. Carson: Is everything satisfactory, M'Lord?
- Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: No, it isn't! And can you please keep Moseley in the kitchens until his hair stops turning blue?
- Mrs. Hughes: I gather from Mr Moseley, you gave the good news to His Lordship?
- Mr. Carson: This is correct.
- Mrs. Hughes: How did you get them to agree?
- Mr. Carson: I said I wouldn't serve if they didn't make him patron.
- Mrs. Hughes: And have you told him that?
- Mr. Carson: He doesn't need to know everything, Mrs Hughes. Nobody has to know everything.
- Lady Edith Crawley: Aren't you being very snobbish?
- Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: We're being realistic, something your generation has such trouble with.
- Mr. Carson: I feel a shaking of the ground I stand on-that everything I believe in will be tested and held up for ridicule over the next few years.
- Mr. Carson: The nature of life is not permanence but flux.
- Mrs. Hughes: Just so, even if it does sound faintly disgusting