Quotes from P.G. Wodehouse

I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.

I was back at the flat so quick that I nearly met myself coming out.

Little as he knew of women, he was aware that as a sex they are apt to be startled by the sight of men crawling out from under the seats of compartments.

In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove. So I have been informed, sir. Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances.

Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay the night. I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If you do, he always decides to stay the night.

More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn't charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective completely.

Trouble, after all, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder

Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance - I'm speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on - and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, Please don't apologise. It's nothing, and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face?

What George was thinking was that the late king Herod had been unjustly blamed for a policy which had been both statesmanlike and in the interests of the public. He was blaming the mawkish sentimentality of the modern legal system which ranks the evisceration and secret burial of small boys as a crime.

I had one of those ideas I do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class.

It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out of the question. I couldn't go through all that again. Not for me? Not for a dozen more like you. I never thought, said Bingo sorrowfully, to hear those words from Bertie Wooster! Well, you've heard them now, I said. Paste them in your hat. Bertie, we were at school together. It wasn't my fault. We've been pals for fifteen years. I know. It's going to take me the rest of my life to live it down.

One more toot--just one single, solitary suggestion of the faintest shadow or suspicion of anything remotely approaching a toot--and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl.

This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money.

Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons. And Freddie Threepwood was one of those younger sons who rather invite the jaundiced eye.

Have you lost the girl you love?' 'That's what I'm trying to figure out. I can't make up my mind. It all depends what construction you place on the words "I never want to see or speak to you again in this world or the next, you miserable fathead."' 'Did she say that?

I don't know why it is, but I've never been able to bear with fortitude anything in the shape of a kid with golden curls. Confronted with one, I feel the urge to step on him or drop things on him from a height.

At a time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright, I remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum blond-hair, the sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class sultans.

He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.

Well, if he comes when I'm out, tell him to wait. And now, Jeeves, mes gants, mon chapeau, et le whangee de monsieur. I must be popping.

More and more clearly as the scones disappeared into his interior he saw that what the sensible man wanted was a wife and a home with scones like these always at his diposal.

What on earth are you doing in Paris? I asked. Bertie, old man, said Biffy solemnly, I came here to try and forget. Well, you've certainly succeeded.

Deep down in his heart the genuine Englishman has a rugged distaste for seeing his country invaded by a foreign army. People were asking themselves by what right these aliens had overrun British soil. An ever-growing feeling of annoyance had begun to lay hold of the nation.

As an energetic Socialist, I do my best to see the good that is in him, but it's hard. Comrade Bristow's the most striking argument against the equality of man I've ever come across.