1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Jerome K. Jerome

Jerome K. Jerome Quotes
page 2

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat .

Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat, and several other novels. Wikipedia  

✵ 2. May 1859 – 14. June 1927   •   Other names Klapka Jerome Jerome, Джэром Клапка Джэром
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Jerome K. Jerome: 87   quotes 11   likes

Jerome K. Jerome Quotes

“If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)
Context: It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners that you study only books. Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.

Love , Youth , Drink , Waiting

“Nothing—so it seems to me…is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. … The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer.”

Jerome K. Jerome

"The Passing of the Third Floor Back" (1908).

Love , Life , Beauty , Weather

“I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.”

Jerome K. Jerome book They and I

They and I (1909), Ch. 2.

Life , Housing

“What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number of weeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men in a Boat

Source: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 15.

Money , Home , Learning

“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Getting On in the World".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

People , Age , Way , Intelligence

“I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Being Idle".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Men , Age , Nature

“It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government — always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it is stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it would make up its mind…We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On the Weather".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Spring , Autumn , Winter , Time

“Tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Nature , Tear , Laughter

“Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Being Shy".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Life , Way , Envy

“There have been a good many funny things said and written about hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty — to the poor.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Being Hard Up".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Reality

“No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Hell , Heart

“They say — people who ought to be ashamed of themselves do — that the consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to the human heart that religion is powerless to bestow. I am afraid these cynical persons are sometimes correct.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Dress and Deportment".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

People , Religion , Heart , Personality

“But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Soul , Hate , Business , Strong

“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Painting , Intelligence , People , Age

“But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

World , Smile , Time

“How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Life , Thinking , Holiday