Pelham Grenville Wodehouse citations

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“She had more curves than a scenic railway”

“An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away.”

“Employers are like horses — they require management.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.”

“When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.”

“[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start."

(Interview,, Issue 64, Winter 1975)”

“You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing.'
'No, sir.'
'One or the other. Not both.”

“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”

“It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.”

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

“Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.”

“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.”

“To find a man's true character, play golf with him.”

“I don't know if you know it, J. B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design.”

“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.”

“… 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.”

“Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit."

"Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction.”

“Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.”

“I expect I shall feel better after tea.”

“I can detach myself from the world. If there is a better world to detach oneself from than the one functioning at the moment I have yet to hear of it.”

“[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments.”

“Oh, I don't know, you know, don't you know?”

“Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?”

“My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice… If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.”

“I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.”