Downton Abbey Withdrawals

This week, I'm missing Downton Abbey like crazy. It's brilliantly cruel for the producers to give us seven weeks of bliss and then make us wait a whole year for season three. I mean, really. But, in the meantime, I've been revisiting some of my favorite Lady Violet moments in the series. Throughout season one, she was hardly my favorite character, despite her witty and snarky comments. But by the time season two rolled around, I found my appreciation for Lady Violet's dry sense of humor increasing. So here's to Lady Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham.



Lady Violet: "You are quite wonderful the way you see room for improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal."
Lady Isobel Crawley: "I take that as a compliment."
Lady Violet: "I must have said it wrong."

Lady Cora: "Are we to be friends then?"
Lady Violet: "We are allies, my dear, which can be a good deal more effective."

Lady Violet: "Well give him a date for when Mary is out of mourning. No one wants to kiss a girl in black."

Lady Violet: "Your quarrel is with my daughter, Rosamund, and not with me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Lady Cora: "I might send Mary over to visit my aunt. She could get to know New York."
Lady Violet: "Oh, I don't think things are quite that desperate."

Lady Violet: "Why would you want to go to a real school? You're not a doctor's daughter."
Sybil: "Nobody learns anything from a governess, apart from French and how to curtsy."
Lady Violet: "What else do you need? Are you thinking of a career in banking?"
Lady Cora: "Things are different in America."
Lady Violet: "I know. They live in wigwams."

And, the general favorite:

"What is a weekend?"