P.G. Wodehouse Quotes

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”

“The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.”

“Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.”

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”

“He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, 'Don't talk rot, old Tom Travers.' 'I am not accustomed to talk rot,' he said. 'Then, for a beginner,' I said, 'you do it dashed well.' And I think you will admit, boys and ladies and gentlemen, that that was telling him.”

“I always advise people never to give advice.”

“And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.”

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

“"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?'”

“… 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.”

“If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime.”

“The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.”

“Nature, when planning this sterling fellow, shoved in a lot more lower jaw than was absolutely necessary and made the eyes a bit too keen and piercing for one who was neither an Empire builder nor a traffic policeman.”

“One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.”

“'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, "Do trousers matter?"'
‘The mood will pass, sir.’”

“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”

“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”

“Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.”

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

“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.”

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”

“Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.”

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”

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

“I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.”

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

“There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.”

“Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.”

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

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

“I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.”

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

“As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.”

“I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”

“She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.”

“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.”

“What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?”

“I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.”

“It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”

“Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred.”

“Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.”

“Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.”

“Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice.”

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

“She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season.”

“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”

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

“He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.”

“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.”

“A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.”

“What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?'
There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter”

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”