Our list of the best quotes from The Gilded Age, HBO’s period TV series drama by Julian Fellowes.
Where to Watch:
Top The Gilded Age Quotes
Ada Brook: We should have gone for the funeral anyway.
Agnes Van Rhijn: It wasn’t worth an uncomfortable day of travel to make sure Henry was dead.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [referring to Bertha] I don’t know which is worse, the noise of the builders, or the chance of running into her in the street.
George Russell: Did you know they shot Jesse James?
Bertha Russell: He had his troubles. I have mine.
Bertha Russell: We’ve been stuck down on 30th Street with yesterday’s men.
George Russell: You chose the house.
Bertha Russell: I didn’t know how things worked then. Now I do.
Bertha Russell: We cannot succeed in this town without Mrs. Astor’s approval. I know that much.
George Russell: So we are to bow down before a woman who has less money than me, and less of absolutely everything than you.
Bertha Russell: [as George puts his feet on the table] Careful, that table belonged to King Ludwig of Bavaria.
George Russell: He had it once. I’ve got it now.
George Russell: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Tom Raikes: Have you slept at all? You look worn out.
Marian Brook: Just what every woman wants to hear.
Bertha Russell: If you’re going to do a thing, you might as well do it properly.
Kowalski: We’ve finished the gilding in the ballroom, Mrs. Russell.
Bertha Russell: No, you think you have finished the gilding, Mr. Kowalski, but nothing is finished till I decide.
George Russell: What about your old friends? You never see them now.
Bertha Russell: I don’t want my old friends. I want new friends.
Marian Brook: I thought I might find a job. Would that be out of the question?
Agnes Van Rhijn: Only if you wish to live with me.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Now, you need to know we only receive the old people in this house, not the new. Never the new.
Agnes Van Rhijn: The old have been in charge since before the revolution. They ruled justly until the new people invaded.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [to Marian] You belong to old New York, my dear, and don’t let anyone tell you different. You are my niece, and you belong to old New York.
Armstrong: [referring to Peggy] She’ll disrupt things. I told Mrs. Bauer, but she wouldn’t listen.
Bannister: Maybe we need a bit of disruption.
Bertha Russell: Persistence is the key to everything. Patience and persistence.
Bertha Russell: I don’t think we should be afraid of new things, or new people.
George Russell: I may be a b****d, Mr. Thorburn. But you are a fool. And of the two, I think I know which I prefer.
Oscar Van Rhijn: [referring to Marian] So that is something to look forward to. A dumpy spinster with a face like a cabbage and a figure to match.
Watson: People want to know you when you’re a success. It’s when you fail they turn their backs.
Watson: I’ve nothing to hide.
Baudin: Well, if that is true, you must be a very unusual person.
George Russell: [referring to Bertha] Whatever her faults, she has imagination, and taste, and nerve.
Stanford White: She will need all three in New York.
Turner: [referring to Bertha] The mistress is not a player in the great game, whatever she says.
George Russell: So, are you ready for your trial by hospitality?
Bertha Russell: Well, if I’m not ready now, I never will be.
George Russell: Things are changing, Bertha.
Bertha Russell: They can’t change fast enough for me.
Bertha Russell: I don’t want to come a long way. I want to go all the way.
George Russell: I’d just like you to be happy. And I know my loving you is not enough.
Bertha Russell: It’s almost enough.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Revolutions are launched by clever people with strong views and excess energy.
Larry Russell: [to Marian, referring to her aunts] Perhaps they’ll educate you, you’ll educate them, and you’ll meet somewhere in the middle.
Stanford White: [to Bertha, referring to the Van Rhijns] They have been in charge since the Mayflower landed, and now it’s your turn, because you are the future. And if you are the future, then they must be the past. That’s what frightens them.
Ada Brook: [to Marian] I only ask that you never break your own moral code, for that is the soundest guide any of us can have.
Turner: Failure’s catchable, Mr. Church. It rubs off if you’re not careful.
Bertha Russell: [after her failed party] I’ll never give up! And I promise you this. I’ll make them sorry one day.
George Russell: I’m glad to hear it, my dear. Defeat is not your color.
Armstrong: Mr. Oscar’s interested in one thing only, and you haven’t got it.
Bridget: What’s that?
Armstrong: Money.
Patrick Morris: I’m not sure its ever successful, trying to mix different types.
Anne Morris: Money isn’t everything.
Marian Brook: It is when you haven’t got it.
Agnes Van Rhijn: New York is a collection of villages, my dear. We know the people who live in our own village.
Marian Brook: But not the ones who don’t.
Agnes Van Rhijn: I’m not concerned with facts. Not if they interfere with my beliefs.
Oscar Van Rhijn: I give you prejudice in a nut shell.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Oh, stop talking to yourself and ring the bell. I’m going up to change.
Oscar Van Rhijn: I doubt it, Mama. I’d say you’ll come down again without having changed at all.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Life has taught me one thing, Miss Scott. If you don’t want to be disappointed, only help those who help themselves.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [referring to Marian] I don’t wish her to marry for money. Only to marry for security, support, and, God willing, affection.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Mrs. Chamberlain’s money is tainted.
Marian Brook: If you were living in one room, with neither heat nor water, I’m sure you would not find it so.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [as they see the Russells] Oh, first Mrs. Chamberlain, and now them. Why don’t we just go outside and roam in the gutter? It will save time.
Ada Brook: Remember, Agnes, charity is the order of the day.
Bertha Russell: We cannot always have what we want.
Anne Morris: [after George closes down the bazaar] You’re not going.
Mrs. Astor: There’s nothing to stay for. The lion has roared.
Mrs. Astor: [referring to George] Well, yesterday I would have said he was nobody. But today? I’m obliged to concede that he is someone to be reckoned with.
Miss Grant: If everyone who claimed to be on the Mayflower really was, it would have to be the size of a White Star liner.
Bannister: Today’s young live for pleasure. You don’t know what hard work is.
Mrs. Bauer: And we don’t know what fun is.
George Russell: [referring to their fortune] All this may be lost.
Bertha Russell: You’ve made it once. You can make it again if you have to.
George Russell: There are moments, my dear, when you are quite marvelous.
Bertha Russell: Useless, each without the other.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [referring to Russells] When you say those words, you stab me in the side.
Oscar Van Rhijn: Then it’s lucky you have the skin of a rhinoceros.
Bridget: [referring to Peggy] I’ve never known anyone who’s had something published in the paper.
Armstrong: Why should you care? You don’t read.
Charles Fane: Russell has more money than God.
Charles Fane: [referring to George] We tried to make a fool of him. He won’t find that easy to forgive.
Bertha Russell: Life is like a bank account. You cannot write a check without first making a deposit.
Marian Brook: [to Peggy] Somewhere there’s an open door. And you’re going to walk through it.
Tom Raikes: Is your aunt still being unreasonable?
Marian Brook: Who said she was ever reasonable?
George Russell: [to Patrick] I won’t say I feel no pity, because I do. But you have not only tried to get the better of me. You and Mrs. Morris have snubbed and belittled my wife. How could I allow that to go unpunished? I don’t suggest that you men committed every crime that I’m avenging here. But to employ a modern phrase, I’m afraid you must face the music.
George Russell: I like to do the right thing. If I don’t lose any money by it.
George Russell: [referring to Morris’s suicide] They’ll blame me.
Bertha Russell: You were strong. He was weak. Who’s to blame for that?
Charles Fane: We behaved badly, and you punished us, which was fair enough. It was a pity that Morris wasn’t equal to the test.
George Russell: This is not a game for weaklings.
Armstrong: What people should do and what they do do aren’t always the same.
Agnes Van Rhijn: I haven’t been thrilled since 1865.
Marian Brook: Aunt Agnes, I cannot make vague promises about unforeseeable circumstances in an unknown future.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [to Ada] Self-destructive? You’ve been reading those German books again. I’ve warned you before, just stick to Louisa May Alcott.
Ada Brook: [to Marian] You think me a weaker person than Agnes, and maybe I am. But even I know that marrying beneath oneself is no guarantee of happiness.
Richard Clay: [to George] If you dine with JP Morgan, you should use a long spoon.
Turner: I believe you need a woman who will help you to become the finest, and the best man that you can be.
George Russell: I’ve already got one.
Peggy Scott: [to Marian] You don’t know anything, about me, about my life, about my situation. I live in a different country from the one you know!
Agnes Van Rhijn: Charity has two functions in our world, my dear. The first is to raise funds for the less fortunate, which is wholly good. The second is to provide a ladder for people to climb into society who do not belong there.
Dorothy Scott: [referring to Peggy] In Brooklyn, she could meet a suitable husband, have her own family, and walk through front doors instead of the back entrances.
Marian Brook: Do you like Mrs. Astor?
Agnes Van Rhijn: That’s like saying, “Do you like rain?” She is a fact of life that we must live with.
Bertha Russell: We’re finally getting to where we belong.
George Russell: I always felt I was where I belonged, because I had you.
Bertha Russell: You mean you needed me to steer us in the right direction.
Marian Brook: “The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.” Robbie Burns.
Ada Brook: “Love makes fools of all of us.” William Thackeray.
Ward McAllister: My butler, Perryman, who thinks he knows everything. It’s different for me. I do know everything.
Ward McAllister: I don’t want the facts, only the gossip.
Bertha Russell: Mr. McAllister, you see through me as if I were glass.
Marian Brook: Mrs. Russell and Mr. McAllister seem to be getting on well.
Charles Fane: Why wouldn’t they, when they are more or less the same person?
Agnes Van Rhijn: You need determination to get anywhere.
Aurora Fane: You should never pick a fight before you know the facts.
Clara Barton: Before you think me a simpleton, I’m well aware that Mrs. Russell is using the charity ladder to climb into the ballrooms of New York. I can still be grateful she chose my charity to be that ladder.
John Adams: [referring to Turner] The vengeful lady’s maid, sounds like a character in a melodrama.
Marian Brook: Surely you believe women will vote eventually.
Agnes Van Rhijn: I believe in small and incremental change, not running around with a banner and a gun.
Marian Brook: [to Peggy] You and Clara Barton are your own people. The women I knew in Doylestown just accepted the role of wife and mother, but you make your own path.
Gladys Russell: You want more for me than I want for myself.
Bertha Russell: That is my job. I’m your mother. I want the whole world for you, and I’ll get it any way I can.
Marian Brook: I suppose the truth is, you never know what’s coming next.
Peggy Scott: So we should try to get the most out of what’s happening now.
Marian Brook: Sometimes it’s hard to be quite sure of what is happening now.
Peggy Scott: Mrs. Russell is winning the battle.
Marian Brook: The battle, maybe, but not the war. Not yet.
Peggy Scott: [to Marian] You’ve just discovered injustice. I’ve lived with it my whole life. If I spent every day fighting with bigots, I’d never get anything done.
Bertha Russell: Just please don’t be soft.
George Russell: No one could accuse you of that.
Gladys Russell: I’m ordinary. I’m just an ordinary person who wants an ordinary life.
George Russell: No, my darling. You are not in the least ordinary. On that point, your mother and I are as one.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [referring to the Russells] These people. You shut the door, they come in the window. You shut the window, they come down the chimney. They never give up.
Agnes Van Rhijn: Bannister is throwing us over to see a lawyer who fasts at lunchtime.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [referring to Bannister] What would we say if a surgeon suddenly flung down his scalpel and went off to see a fasting lawyer?
Marian Brook: What’s Bannister done?
Ada Brook: I’m not certain. He seems to have got involved with some sort of religious lawyer who thinks we’re wrong to eat luncheon. But I may be a bit muddled.
Baudin: The Eton mess looks as it sounds. A mess made by schoolboys.
Agnes Van Rhijn: You are the butler now, John. Not Bannister. Who throws us over on a whim to please an itinerant monk.
Oscar Van Rhijn: When you’re vulnerable, you appreciate support.
Marian Brook: [referring to Agnes] If you’d seen her there. Alone and surrounded like Custer at Little Big Horn, facing the annihilation of everything she believes.
Peggy Scott: Why not help her to find a place for herself in the new world?
Marian Brook: Easier said than done.
Agnes Van Rhijn: To act on impulse is to make oneself a hostage to ridicule.
Marian Brook: You have one life, Mr. Russell. If you take the wrong path, you will pay the price for many years.
Watson: When electricity comes, half our jobs go up in smoke. Cooking, cleaning, it’ll all be done with electricity before you know it.
Mr. Brand: Mr. Russell should be ready for the worst.
George Russell: Believe me, Mr. Russell is always ready for the worst.
Agnes Van Rhijn: My mother always told me never to write anything I wouldn’t want printed on the letters page of a popular journal.
George Russell: I don’t think it in the least funny that I’m facing the possibility of prison, and my wife is more concerned with the date of a ball!
George Russell: I’m a rich man, which means I’m a villain.
Bertha Russell: We’ll face this together, George. We’ll tell them how it’s going to be.
George Russell: If it helps you to believe we’re in control of things.
Agnes Van Rhijn: [to Peggy] Please thank Mrs. Russell for this note, but without a trace of warmth.
