Quotes from Jerome K. Jerome

"Nothing, so it seems to me," said the stranger, "is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life…. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer."

They never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.

The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.

Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.

I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.

We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.

There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused.... sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging oblivion.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

We drink one another's health and spoil our own.

I like cats.... When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stoop down and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness and peace.

[T]he song.... was about a young girl who lived in the Hartz Mountains, and who had given up her life to save her lover's soul; and he died, and met her spirit in the air; and then, in the last verse, he jilted her spirit, and went on with another spirit...

He swore at us in German (which I should judge to be a singularly effective language for that purpose)...

When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is constantly in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.

It was a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, and his mother—good soul!—gave us hot bacon for supper, and we ate it all—five pounds—and a jam tart afterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we went to bed.

What a doctor wants... is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.

I read the prescription. It ran: "1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand." I followed the directions, with the happy result... that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their own way, but we, poor mortals in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.

Everybody have a problem in their life but, not everybody have the courage to face it

Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous -- almost of pedantic -- veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.

When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them.

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.