Quotes from Jerome K. Jerome

I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.

I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

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

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.

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

We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.

How good one feels when one is full -- how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.

After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.

It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.

I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.

Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble.

One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest.