Jerome K. Jerome Quotes & Sayings

Information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. Its pages form the record of events that really happened. All that has been done — Jerome K. Jerome

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one. — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — Jerome K. Jerome

A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull. — Jerome K. Jerome

I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting. — Jerome K. Jerome

There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. — Jerome K. Jerome

Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor. — Jerome K. Jerome

Affection will burn cheerily when the white flame of love is flickered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day and be piled up ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. — Jerome K. Jerome

A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven. — Jerome K. Jerome

Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection. — Jerome K. Jerome

My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City, peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer it sweetly sqeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The drum lies silent with the drumstick inside, no longer do we make a brave noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put out foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy has exploded and burnt our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend things to-morrow — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt. — Jerome K. Jerome

Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera. — Jerome K. Jerome

Young ladies take their notions of our sex from the novels written by their own, and compared with the monstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmare literature, Phytagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were fair average specimens of humanity.
In these so-called books, the chief lover, or Greek god, as he is admiringly referred to -by the way, they do not say which "Greek god" it is that the gentleman bears such a striking likeness to; it might be hump-backed Vulcan, or double-faced Janus, or even driveling Silenus. He resembles the whole family of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is meant. — Jerome K. Jerome

People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal - so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted. — Jerome K. Jerome

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. — Jerome K. Jerome

A boy's muscles move quicker than his thoughts. — Jerome K. Jerome

Don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. — Jerome K. Jerome

If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad. — Jerome K. Jerome

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. — Jerome K. Jerome

It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles. — Jerome K. Jerome

You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season. — Jerome K. Jerome

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house. — Jerome K. Jerome

We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out. — Jerome K. Jerome

Resolutions were made for man, not man for resolutions. — Jerome K. Jerome

If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply. — Jerome K. Jerome

Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable. After we had washed them - well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt contained in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash, and worked it into our clothes. — Jerome K. Jerome

For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty, about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, — Jerome K. Jerome

I like a bit of fun myself. But not if you've got to pay for it. Where's the fun in that? — Jerome K. Jerome

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed. — Jerome K. Jerome

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of existence lies. — Jerome K. Jerome

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister's kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Now I happen to possess the bump of locality. It is not a virtue; I make no boast of it. It is merely an animal instinct that I cannot help. That things occasionally get in my way - mountains, precipices, rivers, and such like obstructions - is no fault of mine. My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road. That the middle road had not character enough to continue for any quarter of a mile in the same direction; that after three miles up and down hill it ended abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have been laid to my door. If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that I am convinced. — Jerome K. Jerome

So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on. — Jerome K. Jerome

The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream. — Jerome K. Jerome

The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction. — Jerome K. Jerome

I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion. — Jerome K. Jerome

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity. — Jerome K. Jerome

To be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to convey its opposite. — Jerome K. Jerome

How good one feels when one is full
how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — Jerome K. Jerome

He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely. — Jerome K. Jerome

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. — Jerome K. Jerome

If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby it. — Jerome K. Jerome

Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug. — Jerome K. Jerome

There is no pathos in real misery, no luxury in real grief. — Jerome K. Jerome

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done. — Jerome K. Jerome

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

The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be. — Jerome K. Jerome

We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself. — Jerome K. Jerome

Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble. — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — Jerome K. Jerome

A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. — Jerome K. Jerome

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves! — Jerome K. Jerome

Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls are ever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watch the flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them all are the shadows of our own dead selves. — Jerome K. Jerome

There is an iron "scold's bridle" in Walton Church. They used these things in ancient days for curbing women's tongues. They have given up the attempt now. I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing else would be strong enough. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is no more effort for a man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of habit. — Jerome K. Jerome

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. — Jerome K. Jerome

The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them. But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let us now return. — Jerome K. Jerome

The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man. — Jerome K. Jerome

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. — Jerome K. Jerome

I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one receives: 'Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost but not quite to touch the uvula try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath and compress your glottis. Now without opening your lips say "Garoo".' And when you have done it they are not satisfied. — Jerome K. Jerome

A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind. — Jerome K. Jerome

I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it. — Jerome K. Jerome

Foolish people ... When I say foolish people in this contemptuous way, I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there's one person I do despise more than another, it's the man who doesn't think exactly the same on all topics as I do. — Jerome K. Jerome

What's he want to howl like that for when I'm playing?" George would exclaim indignantly, while taking aim at him with a boot. "What do you want to play like that for when he is howling?" Harris would retort, catching the boot. "You let him alone. He can't help howling. He's got a musical ear, and your playing makes him howl. — Jerome K. Jerome

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! — Jerome K. Jerome

The case was becoming serious. It was now past midnight. The hotels at Shiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round, knocking up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know if they let apartments! George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house. But then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back and refuses to lock us up!"
We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen. Besides, we did not want to overdo the thing and get six months. — Jerome K. Jerome

Has he been snatched up to heaven?" I queried. "They'd hardly have taken the pie too," said George. — Jerome K. Jerome

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

We had just commenced the third course - the bread and jam - when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn't given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty. — Jerome K. Jerome

A 'Bummel', I explained, I should describe as a journey, long or
short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity
of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.
Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields
and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for
a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever
on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with
some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We
have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we
have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over. — Jerome K. Jerome

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since. — Jerome K. Jerome

The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. — Jerome K. Jerome

To tell you the truth - mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please; I shouldn't like your wife to know I said it - the women folk don't understand these things; but between you and me, you know, I think it does a man good to swear. — Jerome K. Jerome

So we went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston. — Jerome K. Jerome

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating. It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day. — Jerome K. Jerome

It's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before. — Jerome K. Jerome

George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it. George thought the music might do him good - said music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like.
Harris said he would rather have the headache. — Jerome K. Jerome

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. — Jerome K. Jerome

Harris's fixed ideas that he can sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among those of Harris's friends who have heard him try, is that he can't and never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try. — Jerome K. Jerome

In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was - What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, I wish Fate hadn't made me this sort of man. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so. — Jerome K. Jerome

What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over — Jerome K. Jerome

You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it. — Jerome K. Jerome

He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER) — Jerome K. Jerome

When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them. — Jerome K. Jerome

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery. — Jerome K. Jerome

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

Idling has always been my strong point. — Jerome K. Jerome

Give an average baby a fair chance, and if it doesn't do something it oughtn't to a doctor should be called in at once. — Jerome K. Jerome

THERE were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course. — Jerome K. Jerome

Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside," is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, "the average person," but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward. — Jerome K. Jerome

The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently. — Jerome K. Jerome

We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without. — Jerome K. Jerome

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the oven and baked. — Jerome K. Jerome