Wodehouse Quotes

I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Into the emotional scene which followed I need not go in detail. You will have witnessed much the same sort of thing in the pictures, when the United States Marines arrive in the nick of time to relieve the beleaguered garrison. I may sum it up by saying that he fawned upon me. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

You should read Wodehouse when you're well and when you're poorly;when you're travelling, and when you're not;when you're feeling clever, and when you're feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits,no matter how high they happen to be already. ~ Lynne Truss

Much has been written on the subject of bed-books. The general consensus of opinion is that a gentle, slow-moving story makes the best opiate ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Sir Roderick Glossop, Honoria's father, is always called a nerve specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he's a sort of janitor to the looney-bin. I mean to say, when your uncle the Duke begins to feel the strain a bit and you find him in the blue drawing room sticking straws in his hair, old Glossop is the first person you send for. ... Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another, and I suppose that, being in that position - I mean, constantly having to sit on people's heads while their nearest and dearest phone to the asylum to send round the waggon - does tend to make a chappie take what you call a warped view of humanity. ~ 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

I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Hugo?' 'Millicent?' 'Is that you?' 'Yes. Is that you?' 'Yes.' Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Tell me," said Ashe gratefully, leaning forward in an attitude of attention, "all about the lining of your stomach. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Jeeves, Mr Little is in love with that female."
"So I gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage."
I clutched my brow.
"Slapping him?"
"Yes, sir. Roguishly. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Jack: "We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia."
Mary: "Isch!"
"There! You're sneezing already."
"I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust."
"It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you've every reason to sneeze; but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine."
"I'm disgusted with you - with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying - - "
"Saying - - ?"
She was silent.
"What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can't get away from that, and it's good enough for me."
"Well, it's not true any longer."
"Yes, it is," said Wilton, comfortably, "bless it."
"It is not. I'm going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again."
She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.
"There's a jelly-fish just where you're going to sit," said Wilton.
"I don't care."
"It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often."
"I'm not amused."
"Have patience. I can be funnier than that." - Wilton's Holiday ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Between an egg that is fried and an egg that is cremated there is a wide and substantial difference. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets.
He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She was at the valiant age when we burn to right wrongs and succour the oppressed, ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit."
"Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.
"Hallo!"
"Do you like the name Mabel?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?"
"No."
He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.
"Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?"
"Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I've known him to do it'
'Do what?'
'Not strike lambs ~ P.G. Wodehouse

A detective is only human. The less of a detective, the more human he is. Henry was not much of a detective, and his human ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In these disturbed days in which we live, it has probably occurred to all thinking men that something drastic ought to be done about aunts. Speaking for myself, I have long felt that stones should be turned and avenues explored with a view to putting a stopper on the relatives in question. If someone were to come to me and say, 'Wooster, would you be interested in joining a society I am starting whose aim will be the suppression of aunts or at least will see to it that they are kept on a short chain and are not permitted to roam hither and thither at will, scattering desolation on all side?', I would reply, 'Wilbraham', if his name was Wilbraham, 'I am with you heart and soul. Put me down as a foundation member. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Tell him my future is in his hands and that, if the wedding bells ring out, he can rely on me, even unto half my kingdom. Well, call it ten quid. Jeeves would exert himself with ten quid on the horizon, what? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Mother always used to say, 'If you want to succeed in life, please the women. They are the real bosses. The men don't count. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. ~ Rex Stout

Nobody ever wants to do anything except what they are not allowed to do. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In private life, Lottie Blossom tended to substitute for wistfulness and pathos a sort of "Passed-For-Adults-Only" joviality which expressed itself outwardly in a brilliant and challenging smile, and inwardly and spiritually in her practice of keeping alligators in wickerwork baskets and asking unsuspecting strangers to lift the lid. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He was stoutly opposed to the idea of marrying anyone; but if, as happens to the best of us, he ever were compelled to perform the wedding glide, he had always hoped it would be with some lady golf champion who would help him with his putting, and thus, by bringing his handicap down a notch or two, enable him to save something from the wreck, so to speak. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Tut!' I said. 'What did you say?' 'I said "Tut!"' 'Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It is madness to come to country houses without one's bottle of Mickey Finns. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange back yard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

For years Belpher oysters had been the mainstay of gay supper parties at the Savoy, the Carlton and Romano's. Dukes doted on them; chorus girls wept if they were not on the bill of fare. And then, in an evil hour, somebody discovered that what made the Belpher oyster so particularly plump and succulent was the fact that it breakfasted, launched and dined almost entirely on the local sewage. There is but a thin line ever between popular homage and execration. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

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

He sat looking at it with his eyes protruding in the manner popularized by snails, looking like something stuffed by a taxidermist who had learned his job from a correspondence course and had only got as far as lesson three. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I started violently, as if some unseen hand had goosed me. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The last few minutes of waiting in a cupboard are always the hardest. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

hoping that this was some jolly practical joke and that the real chap would shortly jump out from behind a chair and say "Boo! ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Pretty soft!' he cried. 'To have to come and live in New York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!'
I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
'It would kill me to have to live in New York,' he went on. 'To have to share the air with six million people! TO have to wear stiff collars and decent clothes all the time! To - ' He started. 'Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a ghastly notion!'
I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
'My dear chap!' I said, reproachfully.
'Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?'
'Jeeves,' I said coldly. 'How many suits of evening clothes have we?'
'We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets- '
'Three.' ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but - but it was an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I remember rightly?'
'As ugly as that? '
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
'I don't see how it could have been, old chap. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man's friend. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It is fatal to let any dog know that he is funny, for he immediately loses his head and starts hamming it up. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

All things come to him who waits, and among them is that unpleasant sensation of a cold hand upon the portion of the body which lies behind the third waistcoat button. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Come to the bit about soft silk shirts for evening wear?" I asked carelessly.
"Yes, sir," said Jeeves, in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend. "And if I may be pardoned for saying so - "
"You don't like it?"
"No, sir. I do not. Soft silk shirts with evening costume are not worn, sir."
"Jeeves," I said, looking the blighter diametrically in the centre of the eyeball, "they're dashed well going to be. I may as well tell you now that I have ordered a dozen of those shirtings from Peabody and Simms, and it's no good looking like that, because I am jolly well adamant."
"If I might - "
"No, Jeeves," I said, raising my hand, "argument is useless. Nobody has a greater respect than I have for your judgment in socks, in ties, and - I will go farther - in spats; but when it comes to evening shirts your nerve seems to fail you. You have no vision. You are prejudiced and reactionary. Hidebound is the word that suggests itself. It may interest you to learn that when I was at Le Touquet the Prince of Wales buzzed into the Casino one night with soft silk shirt complete."
"His Royal Highness, sir, may permit himself a certain licence which in your own case - "
"No, Jeeves," I said, firmly, "it's no use. When we Woosters are adamant, we are - well, adamant, if you know what I mean."
"Very good, sir."
I could see the man was wounded, and, of course, the whole episode had been extremely jarring and unpleasa ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Some girls are like ants in your pants ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Mike's statement that he wanted to get up early and have a ride had been received by Psmith, with whom early rising was not a hobby, with honest amazement and a flood of advice and warning on the subject.
"One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day - I cannot recall for the moment how many - made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. However, there you are. I've given you the main idea of the thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity. Still, if you're bent on it ... . ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She has an eye like a man-eating fish ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Liz," said Mr. Cootes, lost in admiration, "when it comes to doping out a scheme, you're the snake's eyebrows! ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He was always in a sort of fever because he was dropping behind schedule with his daily acts of kindness. However hard he tried, he'd fall behind; and then you would find him prowling about the house, setting such a clip to try and catch up with himself that Easeby was rapidly becoming a perfect hell for man and beast. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It was some time before this happened, for he had got a very fine hand indeed. I suppose it wasn't often that the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School came across a man public-spirited enough to call their head master a silly ass, and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain manner. Gussie may have been one over the eight, but as far as the majority of those present were concerned he was sitting on top of the world. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking. He ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He lost his appetite for reading. He was afraid of being overwhelmed again. In mystery novels people died like dolls being discarded; in science fiction enormities of space and time conspired to crush the humans ; and even in P.G. Wodehouse he felt a hollowness, a turning away from reality that was implicitly bitter, and became explicit in the comic figures of futile parsons. ~ John Updike

His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see he loved like a thousand bricks. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In love with me. Don't be absurd."
"My dear old thing, you don't know young Bingo. He can fall in love with anybody."
"Thank you!"
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way, you know. I don't wonder at his taking to you. Why, I was in love with you myself once."
"Once? Ah! And all that remains now are the cold ashes? This isn't once of your tactful evenings, Bertie."
"Well, my dear sweet thing, dash it all, considering that you gave me the bird and nearly laughed yourself into a permanent state of hiccoughs when I asked you - "
"Oh, I'm not reproaching you. No doubt there were faults on both sides. He's very good-looking, isn't he?"
"Good-looking? Bingo? Bingo good-looking? No, I say, come now, really!"
"I mean, compared with some people," said Cynthia. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

A ripe suggestion," I said. "Where are you meeting her? At the Ritz?"
"Near the Ritz."
He was geographically accurate. About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London and into this, if you'll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He couldn't have moved quicker if he had been the dachshund Poppet, who at this juncture was running round in circles, trying, if I read his thoughts aright, to work off the rather heavy lunch he had had earlier in the afternoon. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The allowance vanished absolutely; and in its place there came into being an arrangement. By this, his lordship was to have whatever money he wished, but he must ask for it, and state why it was needed. If the request were reasonable, the cash would be forthcoming; if preposterous, it would not. The flaw in the scheme, from his lordship's point of view, was the difference of opinion that can exist in the minds of two men as to what the words reasonable and preposterous may be taken to mean. Twenty pounds, for instance, would, in the lexicon of Sir Thomas Blunt, be perfectly reasonable for the current expenses of a man engaged to Molly McEachern, but preposterous for one to whom she had declined to remain engaged. It is these subtle shades of meaning that make the English language so full of pitfalls for the foreigner. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She gave the impression of smiling with difficulty, possibly for fear of getting wrinkles. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

...though the conversation always touched an exceptionally high level of brilliance, there was apt to be a good deal of sugar thrown about. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

My earnest hope is that the entire remainder of my existence will be one round of unruffled monotony. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

You have the most infernal habit when anyone says the simplest thing to you, of letting your lower jaw drop and looking like a half-witted sheep staring over a fence. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He made a noise like a pig swallowing half a cabbage, ~ P.G. Wodehouse

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. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours. From such masterful spirits she turns away. But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who's wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill. ~ 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

Honestly, Ronnie. I know it hurts your head to think, but try just for a moment. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Mary, in these days, simply couldn't see that he was on the earth. She looked round him, above him, and through him, but never at him; ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I don't know why it is, but women who have anything to do with Opera, even if they're only studying for it, always appear to run to surplus poundage. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He must be provided with a claque. It will be your task, Jeeves, ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Gussie opened his vaudeville career ~ P.G. Wodehouse

After all, golf is only a game,' said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they're saying. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out of the question. I couldn't go through all that again."
"Not for me?"
"Not for a dozen more like you."
"I never thought," said Bingo sorrowfully, "to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!"
"Well, you've heard them now," I said. "Paste them in your hat."
"Bertie, we were at school together."
"It wasn't my fault."
"We've been pals for fifteen years."
"I know. It's going to take me the rest of my life to live it down. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

He sallied forth, having told all those bally lies with the clear, blue, pop-eyed gaze of a young child. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift the specie out of your pockets. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The wretched man seemed fully conscious of his position. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I will be your wife, Bertie.' There didn't seem much to say to this except 'Oh, thanks. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Bertie, it is imperative that you marry."
"But, dash it all ... "
"Yes! You should be breeding children to ... "
"No, really, I say, please!" I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women's clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn't in the smoking-room. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I have always had a suspicion that Aunt Dahlia, while invariably matey and bonhomous and seeming to take pleasure in my society, has a lower opinion of my intelligence than I quite like. Too often it is her practice to address me as 'fathead', and if I put forward any little thought or idea or fancy in her hearing it is apt to be greeted with the affectionate but jarring guffaw. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The Empress of Blandings was a pig who took things as they came. Her motto, like Horace's, was nil admirari. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Lord Chesterfield said that since he had had the full use of his reason nobody had heard him laugh. I don't suppose you have read Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters To His Son'?
... Well, of course I hadn't. Bertram Wooster does not read other people's letters. If I were employed in the post office I wouldn't even read the postcards. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I remained motionless, like a ventriloquist's dummy whose ventriloquist has gone off to the local and left it sitting. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It is the opinion of most thoughtful students of life that happiness in this world depends chiefly on the ability to take things as they come. An instance of one who may be said to have perfected this attitude is to be found in the writings of a certain eminent Arabian author who tells of a traveller who, sinking to sleep one afternoon upon a patch of turf containing an acorn, discovered when he woke that the warmth of his body had caused the acorn to germinate and that he was now some sixty feet above the ground in the upper branches of a massive oak. Unable to descend, he faced the situation equably. 'I cannot,' he observed, 'adapt circumstances to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.' Which he did. ~ 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

Good God, Clarence! You look like a bereaved tapeworm. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Reading the book now means that one can, if one wants, play Fantasy Literature
match writers off against each other and see who won over the long haul. Faulkner or Henry Green? I reckon the surprise champ was P.G. Wodehouse, as elegant and resourceful a prose stylist as anyone held up for our inspection here ... he has turned out to be as enduring as anyone apart from Orwell. Jokes, you see. People do like jokes.
(Hornby's thoughts after reading "Enemies of Promise" by Cyril Connolly) ~ Nick Hornby

It was all Mrs. Waddington could do to refrain from hurling a bust of Edgar Allan Poe at her head. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

So!' he said, at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that fellows ever really do say 'So!'. I had always thought it was just a thing you read in books. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantlepiece. I've tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only. ~ P.G. Wodehouse