Quotes from Jerome K. Jerome

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.

All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men - more so, if possible.

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.

Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away.

1lb beefstak, with 1pt bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand.

If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do...

I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.

Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.

He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.

Idling has always been my strong point.

Cultivate, I said, a sense of humor. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.

With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being a general disinclination to work of any kind. What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.

Montmorency's ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. 

It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will never come back to him again - being wasted in a mere brutish sleep.

Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a T. I don't know what a T is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.

In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows. Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!

they cursed us - not with a common cursory curse, but with long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the whole of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included all our relations, and covered everything connected with us - good, substantial curses.

when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain.

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any.

It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay at.  The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall," and she is ever "drawing herself up to her full height."  At the "Barley Mow" she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.

Swearing relieves the feelings - that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.