Quotes from P.G. Wodehouse

One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-natured, a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to gather round and say what a pity it all is.

You know, with the most charitable feelings towards him, there are moments when you can't help thinking that young Bingo ought to be in some sort of a home.

I said, 'Don't talk rot, Old Tom Travers. I am not accustomed to talk rot, he said. Then, for a beginner, I said, you do it dashed well.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.

I love that girl, Bertie, he went on, when he'd finished coughing. Yes. Nice girl, of course. He eyed me with deep loathing. Don't speak of her in that horrible casual way. She's an angel. An angel!

moment blighted Harold discovered that training meant knocking off pastry, taking exercise, and keeping away from the cigarettes, he was all against it, and it was only by unceasing vigilance that we managed to keep him in any shape at all.

If you haven't realised by this time that I love you, and always shall love you, and have never loved anybody else, and never shall love anybody else, you're a fathead

In private life, Lottie Blossom tended to substitute for wistfulness and pathos a sort of "Passed-For-Adults-Only" joviality which expressed itself outwardly in a brilliant and challenging smile, and inwardly and spiritually in her practice of keeping alligators in wickerwork baskets and asking unsuspecting strangers to lift the lid.

Bertie,' he said, 'I want your advice.' 'Carry on.' 'At least, not your advice, because that wouldn't be much good to anybody. I mean, you're a pretty consummate old ass, aren't you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings, of course.

You two fit like pork and beans.

He was always inclined to read a fictitious sombreness into things when the shadows began to creep over the world and it was still too early for a cocktail.

If I meet a bird, I wave a friendly hand at it, to let it know that I wish it well, but I don't want to crouch behind a bush observing its habits.

I mean, when you've got used to a club where everything's nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie's attention, you heave a piece of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven and it isn't considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he went through the Peninsular War together.

He was a red-headed chap, and my experience of the red-headed is that you can always expect high blood pressure from them in times of stress. The first Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary Queen of Scots.

beggars approached the task of trying to persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the difference. It was one of those happy mornings.

Mr Wooster, I am not ashamed to say that the tears came into my eyes as I listened to them. It amazes me that a man as young as you can have been able to plumb human nature so surely to its depths; to play with so unerring a hand on the quivering heart-strings of your reader; to write novels so true, so human, so moving, so vital! Oh, it's just a knack, I said.

Hallo, Bertie. Hallo, old turnip. Where have you been all this while? Oh, here and there! Ripping weather we're having, Bertie. Not bad. I see the Bank Rate is down again. No, really? Disturbing news from Lower Silesia, what? Oh, dashed! He pottered about the room for a bit, babbling at intervals. The boy seemed cuckoo. Oh, I say, Bertie! he said suddenly, dropping a vase which he had picked off the mantelpiece and was fiddling with. I know what it was I wanted to tell you. I'm married.

It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment.

A little, panted Mrs. Peagrim, who, though she danced often and vigorously, was never in the best of condition, owing to her habit of neutralizing the beneficent effects of exercise by surreptitious candy-eating. I'm a little out of breath.

We run to height a bit in our family, and there's about five-foot-nine of Aunt Agatha, topped off with a beaky nose, an eagle eye, and a lot of grey hair, and the general effect is pretty formidable. Anyway, it never even occurred to me for a moment to give her the miss-in-baulk on this occasion. If she said I must go to Roville, it was all over except buying the tickets.

The snail was on the wing and the lark on the thorn - or, rather, the other way around - and God was in His heaven and all right with the world. And presently the eyes closed, the muscles relaxed, the breathing became soft and regular, and sleep, which does something which has slipped my mind to the something sleeve of care, poured over me in a healing wave.

Well, everybody seems to be doing it, I said, so I suppose I had better make the thing unanimous. Here's a fiver. Why, thank you, sir. This is extremely - It won't seem much compared with these vast sums you've been acquiring. Oh, I assure you, sir. And I don't know why I'm giving it to you. No, sir. Still, there it is. Thank you very much, sir.

It may work, Jeeves. It is, at least, worth trying. I shall now leave you, to prepare myself for the ordeal before me with silent meditation.' 'Your tea will be here in a moment, sir.' 'No, Jeeves. This is no time for tea. I must concentrate.

Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated.