Quotes from P.G. Wodehouse

I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare – or, if not, some equally brainy bird – who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneakes up behind him with a bit of lead piping

Wait a minute while I think, said Miss Peavey. There was a pause. Miss Peavey sat with knit brows. How would it be... ventured Mr. Cootes. Cheese it! said Miss Peavey. Mr. Cootes cheesed it.

I'm much too much the popular pet ever since I sang 'Every Nice Girl Loves A Sailor' at the village concert last year. I had them rolling in the aisles. Three encores, and so many bows that I got a crick in the back. Spare me the tale of your excesses, I said distantly. I wore a sailor suit. Please, I said, revolted.

If I might suggest, sir—it is, of course, merely a palliative—but it has often been found in times of despondency that the assumption of formal evening dress has a stimulating effect on the morale.

You see, the catch about portrait painting— I've looked into the thing a bit— is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.

Too often on such occasions one feels, as I feel so strongly with regard to poor old Stilton, that the kindly thing to do would be to seize the prospective bridegroom's trousers in one's teeth and draw him back from danger, as faithful dogs do to their masters on the edge of precipices on dark nights.

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

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.

You won't mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I've just become a socialist. It's a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.

It was one of those heavy, sultry afternoons when nature seems to be saying to itself, 'Now, shall I, or shall I not, scare the pants off these people with a hell of a thunderstorm?

It seems to be one of Nature's laws that the most attractive girls should have the least attractive brothers. Fillmore Nicholas had not worn well. At the age of seven he had been an extraordinarily beautiful child, but after that he had gone all to pieces; and now, at the age of twenty-five, it would be idle to deny that he was something of a mess.

She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs.

Don't they put aunts in Turkey in sacks and drop them in the Bosphorus?' 'Odalisques, sir, I understand. Not aunts.

But why do you want me? I mean, what am I? Ask yourself that. I often have.

Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

INTERVIEWER Have you ever been envious of another writer? WODEHOUSE No, never. I'm really such a voracious reader that I'm only too grateful to get some stuff I can read.

It's brain, I said; pure brain! What do you do to get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves? No, sir. Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born that way there's no use worrying.

Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a much-maligned man King Herod was.

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.

To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow.

He keeps looking at me so oddly." "Oddly? How? Give me an imitation." Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognized the symptoms immediately. "Oh, that's all right," I said. "No need to be alarmed. He's simply in love with you.

What I mean is, if you're absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence, the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.

One of the King Georges of England–I forget which–once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night–I cannot recall at the moment how many–made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory.