Downton Abbey 1×4

Cora, Countess of Grantham: I might send her over to visit my aunt. She could get to know New York.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Oh, I don't think things are quite that desperate.

Cora, Countess of Grantham: She was very upset by the death of poor Mr Pamuk.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Why? She didn't know him. One can't go to pieces at the death of every foreigner. We'd all be in a state of collapse whenever we opened a newspaper.

Isobel Crawley: Oh, and you must wear gloves at all times.
Joseph Molesley: I couldn't wait a table in gloves. I'd look like a footman.
Isobel Crawley: You may have to.

Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Good heavens, what am I sitting on?
Matthew Crawley: A swivel chair.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Oh, another modern brainwave?
Matthew Crawley: Not very modern. They were invented by Thomas Jefferson.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: Why does every day involve a fight with an American?
Matthew Crawley: I'll fetch a different one.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: No, no, no, no. I'm a good sailor.

Lady Mary Crawley: Women like me don't have a life. We choose clothes and pay calls and work for charity and do the season. But really we're stuck in a waiting room until we marry.

Joe Burns: I notice you call yourself "Mrs".
Mrs. Hughes: Housekeepers and cooks are always "Mrs".

Joe Burns: Take your time. I'd rather wait a week for the right answer than get a wrong one in a hurry. Think about it carefully.

Lady Mary Crawley: The only one who never sticks up for me in all this is you. Why is that?
Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: You are my darling daughter and I love you, hard as it is for an Englishman to say the words.
Lady Mary Crawley: Well, then...
Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: If I had made my own fortune and bought Downton for myself, it should be yours without question, but I did not. My fortune is the work of others, who laboured to build a great dynasty. Do I have the right to destroy their work? Or impoverish that dynasty? I am a custodian, my dear, not an owner. I must strive to be worthy of the task I have been set.

Lady Sybil Crawley: It seems rather unlikely, a revolutionary chauffeur.
Branson: Maybe. But I'm a socialist, not a revolutionary. And I won't always be a chauffeur.

Matthew Crawley: You must have thought me an awful prig when I first arrived.
Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: Not a prig. Just a man thrust into something he never wanted or envisaged.
Matthew Crawley: I could only see the absurdity of the whole thing.
Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: I'm sorry.
Matthew Crawley: Well, there are absurdities involved, as I know well enough. Possibilities, too, and I was blind to them. I was determined not to let it change me. It was absurd. If you don't change, you die. Do you think so?
Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I hate change.

Mrs. Hughes: I'm not that farm girl any more. I was flattered, of course, but... I've changed, Mr Carson.
Mr. Carson: Life's altered you, as it's altered me.
Mrs. Hughes: And what would be the point of living if we didn't let life change us?

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+ Quotes on the IMDb