Quotes from P.G. Wodehouse

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.

He groaned slightly and winced like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch.

You agreee with me that the situation is a lulu? Certainly, a somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, Sir.

Half a league Half a league Half a league onward With a hey-nonny-nonny And a hot cha-cha.

Some time ago, he said, --how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life.

We must always remember, however,' said Psmith gravely, 'that poets are also God's creatures.

Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.

What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves? Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake.

On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps...

She came leaping towards me, like Lady Macbeth coming to get first-hand news from the guest-room.

Abandon the idea, Jeeves. I fear you have not studied the sex as I have. Missing her lunch means little or nothing to the female of the species. The feminine attitude toward lunch is notoriously airy and casual. Where you have made your bloomer is confusing lunch with tea. Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it. At such times the most amiable of the sex become mere bombs which a spark may ignite. Bertie Wooster

There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.

The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the way she persisted in missing the gist.

It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

No novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.

When Cynthia smiles, said young Bingo, the skies are blue; the world takes on a roseate hue; birds in the garden trill and sing, and Joy is king of everything, when Cynthia smiles. He coughed, changing gears. When Cynthia frowns - What the devil are you talking about? I'm reading you my poem. The one I wrote to Cynthia last night. I'll go on, shall I? No! No? No. I haven't had my tea.

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

The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways. Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.

We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.

She laughed - a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.

Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing—just a jumble.

I've found, as a general rule of life, that the things you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out not so bad after all.

The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting Heil, Spode! and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?