Pelham Grenville Wodehouse citations

“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.”

“And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.”

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

“The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say `When!”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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?”