Quotes from Jerome K. Jerome

the picture would be up – very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched – except Uncle Podger.

When George is hanged, Harris wil be the worst packer in this world

do think that of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this 'weather-forecast' fraud is about the most aggravating. It 'forecasts' precisely what happened yesterday or the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen today.

If you ask me, I call the whole thing bally foolishness.

You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harries - no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never weeps, he knows not why If Harris's eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

W]hen a man is much above the average size and strength, we cut one of his legs or arms off, so as to make things more equal; we lop him down a bit, as it were. Nature, you see, is somewhat behind the times; but we do what we can to put her straight.

but there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

Our Calvary may be a very little hill compared with the mountains where Prometheus suffered, but to us it is steep and lonely.

A vida de Xantipa deve ter sido um longo tormento, amarrada àquele homem dotado de uma calma capaz de fazer qualquer um ir aos arames. Sócrates. Imaginemos uma mulher casada, condenada a viver dia após dia sem uma só zaragata com o marido! Um homem deve fazer a vontade à mulher nestas matérias.

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me; the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water.  And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

There was no ground-floor — its ground-floor belonged to a house in the next court, and the front door opened direct upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar. Visitors on entering the house would suddenly shoot past the person who had answered the door to them and disappear down these stairs. Those of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it was a trap laid for them, and would shout murder as they lay on their backs at the bottom till somebody came and picked them up.

If I succeed, if I am strong enough to figth the world for myself and win, that will mean I am strong enough and clever to help others

Parliament may as well close down if a few men between them are to be allowed to own the entire Press of the country, and stifle every voice that does not shout their bidding.

É um facto curioso que, uma vez em terra, não haja ninguém que enjoe no mar. A bordo cruzamo-nos com imensa gente muito enjoada, de facto; barcos e barcos cheios deles. Porém, até hoje, ainda nunca encontrei um homem, em terra, que soubesse o que era enjoar no mar. Onde é que se metem, quando estão em terra firme, esses milhares e milhares de maus marinheiros que deambulam em cada navio permanece um mistério.

Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.

Melhor trabalhar e fracassar do que passar a vida dormindo.

As our means increase, so do our desires;and we ever stand midway between the two.

We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the sockets placed for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous work; but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell the tale.

Love is woman's business,and in business we all lay aside our natural weaknesses.

Nós levantamos nossos copos e bebemos à IGUALDADE, à sagrada IGUALDADE; e, em seguida, ordenamos ao garçom para nos trazer Chartreuse Verde e mais charutos

There were four of us—George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were—bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

The only contribution of any value a private citizen can make towards the elucidation of a National upheaval is to record his own sensations.