P. G. Wodehouse Quotations | Page 3

Mr Howard Saxby, literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.

If men's minds were like dominoes, surely his would be the double blank.

Golf is the Great Mystery.

Back horses or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier. But to bet at golf is pure gambling.

New York is a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up just as the rest is going to bed.

The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.

Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it.

It is not mere technical skill that makes a man a golfer, it is the golfing soul.

Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.

His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.

While not exactly disgruntled, he was far from feeling gruntled. He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

But what is the love life of newts, if you boil it right down? Didn't you tell me once that they just waggled their tails at one another in the mating season?''Quite correct.' I shrugged my shoulders. 'Well all right, if they like it. But it's not my idea of molten passion.

"After all, golf is only a game", said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they are saying.

Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.

Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who's wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill.

This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. . . . Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. . . . Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.

What I'm worrying about is what Tom is going to say when he starts talking." "Uncle Tom?" "I wish there was something else you could call him except 'Uncle Tom,' " Aunt Dahlia said a little testily. "Every time you do it, I expect to see him turn black and start playing the banjo.

I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so." "It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.

Great pals we've always been. In fact there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.

What ho!" I said. "What ho!" said Motty. "What ho! What ho!" "What ho! What ho! What ho!" After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

Bertie," he said, "I want your advice." "Carry on." "At least, not your advice, because that wouldn't be much good to anybody. I mean, you're a pretty consummate old [prat], aren't you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings, of course." "No, no, I see that." "What I wish you to do is put the whole thing to that fellow Jeeves of yours, and see what he suggests.

As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.

Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.

Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.

You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.

It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.

I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest of suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.

No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.

She's a sort of human vampire-bat

It is true of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the circumstances seem to demand it.

...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with 'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.

The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.

This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.

When it comes to letting the world in on the secrets of his heart, he has about as much shrinking reticence as a steam calliope.

Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did.

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra la la' as I did the lathering for I was feeling in mid season form this morning.

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. "Nothing further Jeeves", I said with quiet dignity.

Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests!

I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much.

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.

In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.

In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.

Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?

If he had a mind, there was something on it.

Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.

I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis.

Some time ago," he said, "--how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life.

...it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking.

Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.' Yes, sir?' Is it really a frost?' A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.' But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.' Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.' He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.' I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.

I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course.

Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit." "Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction.

Well, you certainly are the most wonderfully woolly baa-lamb that ever stepped.

There's a sort of wooly headed duckiness about you. If I wasn't so crazy about Marmaduke, I could really marry you Bertie.

You agreee with me that the situation is a lulu? Certainly, a somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, Sir.

Providence looks after all the chumps of this world, and personally, I'm all for it.

I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind.

That is life. Just one long succession of misunderstandings and rash acts and what not. Absolutely.

One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.

One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room.

The spine, and I do not attempt to conceal the fact, had become soluble, in the last degree.

He shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you're going to die in about five minutes.

...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.

Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.

He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner-gong due any moment.

I expect I shall feel better after tea.

...there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation.

As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.

It was a silver cow. But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.

To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.

I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well." ~ Bertram "Bertie" Wooster

We must always remember, however,' said Psmith gravely, 'that poets are also God's creatures.

It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.

Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.

I laughed derisively. "For goodness' sake, don't start gargling now. This is serious." "I was laughing." "Oh, were you? Well, I'm glad to see you taking it in this merry spirit." "Derisively," I explained.

What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very different things.

He looks much more like a lobster than most lobsters do.

Hugo?’ ‘Millicent?’ ‘Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.

In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’ ‘Do what?’ ‘Not strike lambs

You're one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It's a great gift.

The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the way she persisted in missing the gist.

She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season

You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing.

Just another proof, of course, of what I often say - it takes all sorts to make a world.

You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)

We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolutely bally insult like the above.

I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.

As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.

Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love. A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.

Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows here not. 'Ah!' he said. '?', cried the eyebrows. '? ? ?' Ashe ignored the eyebrows. ... Mr Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all, but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr Beach did not fill. He was hanged if he was going to let himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating himself.

I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together.

The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap.

I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves, I said, but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?