" It is quite possible, then, that my employer fully expects me to respond to his bantering in a like manner, and considers my failure to do so a form of negligence…" page 16
"My father, as I say, came of a generation mercifully free of such confusions of our professional values." page 35
" Let me now posit this: "dignity" has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits. lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation." page 42
"But let me say immediately I do not have Miss Kenton in mind at all when I say this. Of course, she too eventually left my stuff to get married, but I can vouch that during the time she worked as a housekeeper under me, she was nothing less than dedicated and never allowed her priorities to be distracted." page 51
I have waited at table every day for the last fifty-four years, my father remarked, his voice perfectly unhurried. page 65
"Miss Kenton, I am surprised to find you reaching in this matter. Surely. I don't have to remind you that our professional duty is not to our own foribles and sentiments, but to the wishes of our employer." page 149
"Do you realize how much it would have helped to me?Why, Mr. Stevens, why, why?Why do you always have to pretend?" Page 153-4
Of course, any butler who regards his vocation with pride, any butler who aspires at all to a 'dignity in keeping with his position, as the Hayes Society once put it, should never allow himself to be ' off duty' in the presence of others. page 169
" I'm not talking politics. I'm just saying, that's all. You can't have dignity if you are a slave. But every Englishman can grasp it if only he cares. Because we fought for that right." page 186
I am the butler of Darlington Hall near oxford. page 207
The fact is, events of global significance are taking place in this house at this very morning. page 218
I had, after all, just come through an extremely trying evening, throughout which I had managed to preserve a ' dignity in keeping with my position'. page 227
" The rest of my life stretches out like an emptiness before me." page 236
"Well, whatever awaits me, Mrs. Bean. I know I'm not awaited by emptiness. If only I were. But oh no, there's work, work and more work. " page 237
" ... and one day I realized I loved my husband. You spend so much time with someone, you find you get used to him." page 239
"The evening's the best part of the day. You’ve done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. That's how I look at it. Ask nobody, they'll all tell you. The everything's the best part of the day." page 244
"What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy." page 244
