P.g. Wodehouse Quotes

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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?

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

She was, in short, melted by his distress, as so often happens with the female sex. Poets have frequently commented on this. You are probably familiar with the one who said, Oh, woman in our hours of ease tum tumty tiddly something please, when something something something brow, a something something something thou.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

...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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few words for her Husbands and Brothers page on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing. I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop, I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse