P.g. Wodehouse Quotes

At a time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright, I remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum blond-hair, the sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class sultans.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.I suppose you haven't breakfasted?I have not yet breakfasted.Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?No, thank you.She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage league or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of silence.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

All political meetings are very much alike. Somebody gets up and introduces the speaker of the evening, and then the speaker of the evening says at great length what he thinks of the scandalous manner in which the Government is behaving or the iniquitous goings-on of the Opposition. From time to time confederates in the audience rise and ask carefully rehearsed questions, and are answered fully and satisfactorily by the orator. When a genuine heckler interrupts, the orator either ignores him, or says haughtily that he can find him arguments but cannot find him brains. Or, occasionally, when the question is an easy one, he answers it. A quietly conducted political meeting is one of England's most delightful indoor games. When the meeting is rowdy, the audience has more fun, but the speaker a good deal less.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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 speak French.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, What are my big scenes? and then get every drop of juice out of

~ P.g. Wodehouse

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

If girls realized their responsibilities they would be so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon the practice altogether. There are moments in a man's life when a girl's smile can have as important results as an explosion of dynamite.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Man's inability to get out of bed in the morning is a curious thing. One may reason with oneself clearly and forcibly without the slightest effect. One knows that delay means inconvenience. Perhaps it may spoil one's whole day. And one also knows that a single resolute heave will do the trick. But logic is of no use. One simply lies there.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Water!' cried Marie.'Vinegar!' recommended the bell-boy.'Eu-de-Cologne!' said Bill.'Pepper!' said Lord Tidmouth.Mary had another suggestion.'Give her air!'So had the bell-boy.'Slap her hands!'Lord Tidmouth went further.'Sit on her head!' he advised.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

If you don't want me to attend the patient I'll go.''But she can't see a doctor now.''Why not?''She isn't well.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Excuse me, I must go and putt

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Morning, Bill,' said Lord Tidmouth agreeably.'Go to hell!' said Bill.'Right-ho,' said his lordship.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I couldn't have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

...writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

[On writing Jeeves and Wooster stories]:You tell yourself that you can take Jeeves stories or leave them alone, that one more can't possibly hurt you, because you know you can pull up whenever you feel like it, but it is merely wish-full thinking. The craving has gripped you and there is no resisting it.You have passed the point of no return.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

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.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?

~ P.g. Wodehouse

NOW, touching this business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

She laughed - a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Captain Bradbury's right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope...Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves.No, sir.There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't.Very true, sir.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Employers are like horses — they require management.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Girls do go for the finely-chiselled. And apart from his looks, he's and artist, and there's something about artists that seems to act on the other sex like catnip on cats.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I have been studying the principles of socialism deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. Ah, noble scheme! Me for it!

~ P.g. Wodehouse

You won't mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I've just become a socialist. It's a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgement by the party of the second part's glamour. Put it like this: the male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine for the non-rabbit) and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Have you ever seen a man, woman, or child who wasn’t eating an egg or just going to eat an egg or just coming away from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is the foundation of daily life. Stop the first man you meet in the street and ask him which he’d sooner lose, his egg or his wife, and see what he says!

~ P.g. Wodehouse