P.G. Wodehouse Quotes & Sayings

I read the paragraph again. A peculiar feeling it gave me. I don't know if you have ever experienced the sensation of seeing the announcement of the engagement of a pal of yours to a girl whom you were only saved from marrying yourself by the skin of your teeth. It induces a sort of
well, it's difficult to describe it exactly; but I should imagine a fellow would feel much the same if he happened to be strolling through the jungle with a boyhood chum and met a tigress or a jaguar, or what not, and managed to shin up a tree and looked down and saw the friend of his youth vanishing into the undergrowth in the animal's slavering jaws. A sort of profound, prayerful relief, if you know what I mean, blended at the same time with a pang of pity. What I'm driving at is that, thankful as I was that I hadn't had to marry Honoria myself, I was sorry to see a real good chap like old Biffy copping it. I sucked down a spot of tea and began brooding over the business. — P.G. Wodehouse

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot. — P.G. Wodehouse

Oh, Jeeves," I said, "did Peabody and Simms send those soft silk shirts?"
"Yes, sir. I sent them back."
"Sent them back!"
"Yes, sir."
I eyed him for a moment. But I mean to say. I mean, what's the use?
"Oh, all right," I said. "Then lay out one of the gents' stiff-bosomed."
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves. — P.G. Wodehouse

All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression. But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated. — P.G. Wodehouse

...what is a pleasant voice if the soul be vile? — P.G. Wodehouse

Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking. He — P.G. Wodehouse

I say!" he said. "Are you broke?"
Nelly laughed.
"Am I? If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole in the
middle. — P.G. Wodehouse

[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments. — P.G. Wodehouse

We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. "Nothing further Jeeves", I said with quiet dignity. — P.G. Wodehouse

Tuppy wiped a fair portion of Hampshire out of his eye, and peered round him in a dazed kind of way ... — P.G. Wodehouse

I am Psmith. I sub-edit. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

He was rigidly truthful, where the issue concerned only himself. Where it was a case of saving a friend, he was prepared to act in a manner reminiscent of an American expert witness. — P.G. Wodehouse

It has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking. — P.G. Wodehouse

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose. — P.G. Wodehouse

I worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on! continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. Fred thompson and one or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the chappie behind the bar, was listening with his ears flapping. But there's no reticence about Bingo. He always reminds me of the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice. — P.G. Wodehouse

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. — P.G. Wodehouse

I was in that painful condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not yet got one's second. — P.G. Wodehouse

Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror. — P.G. Wodehouse

It seems to me that you and I were made for each other. I am your best friend's best friend and we both have a taste for stealing other people's jewellery. — P.G. Wodehouse

She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments. — P.G. Wodehouse

The medicine-man, having given him the once-over, had ordered him to abstain from all alcoholic liquids, and in addition to tool down the hill to the Royal Pump-Room each morning at eight-thirty and imbibe twelve ounces of warm crescent saline and magnesia. It doesn't sound much, put that way, but I gather from contemporary accounts that it's practically equivalent to getting outside a couple of little old last year's eggs beaten up in sea-water. And the thought of Uncle George, who had oppressed me sorely in my childhood, sucking down that stuff and having to hop out of bed at eight-fifteen to do so was extremely grateful and comforting of a morning.
At four in the afternoon he would toddle down the hill again and repeat the process, and at night we would dine together and I would loll back in my chair, sipping my wine, and listen to him telling me what the stuff had tasted like. In many ways the ideal existence. — P.G. Wodehouse

The ideal girl ... would be kind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent, and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness to enable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself. — P.G. Wodehouse

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine. — P.G. Wodehouse

It's the burglars!" quavered Mrs. Hignett. In the stress of recent
events she had completely forgotten the existence of those enemies
of society. "They were dancing in the hall when I arrived, and now
they're playing the orchestrion!"
"Light-hearted chaps!" said Eustace, admiring the sang-froid of
the criminal world. "Full of spirits! — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread- and-butter-offering, yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia's type nearly always like at first sight. — P.G. Wodehouse

Psmith is the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a plate with watercress round it, thus enabling me to avoid the blood, sweat and tears inseparable from an author's life. — P.G. Wodehouse

That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of thing, what? — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea. — P.G. Wodehouse

Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice. — P.G. Wodehouse

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. — P.G. Wodehouse

Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love. — P.G. Wodehouse

I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French — P.G. Wodehouse

Hear him now as he toils. He has a long garden-implement in his hand, and he is sending up the death-rate in slug circles with a devastating rapidity. "Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay Ta-ra-ra BOOM - " And the boom is a death-knell. As it rings softly out on the pleasant spring air, another stout slug has made the Great Change. — P.G. Wodehouse

Watching you at work, I was reminded of the young lady of Natchez, whose clothes were all tatters and patches. In alluding to which, she would say, Well, Ah itch, and wherever ah itches, Ah scratches. — P.G. Wodehouse

When you're alone you don't do much laughing. — P.G. Wodehouse

Much has been written on the subject of bed-books. The general consensus of opinion is that a gentle, slow-moving story makes the best opiate — P.G. Wodehouse

He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle. — P.G. Wodehouse

It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work. — P.G. Wodehouse

There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots. — P.G. Wodehouse

To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying. — P.G. Wodehouse

Ah, well,' I said resignedly, 'if that's that, that's that, what?' 'So it would appear, sir.' 'Nothing to do but keep the chin up and the upper lip as stiff as can be managed. I think I'll go to bed with an improving book. Have you read The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish by Rex West? — P.G. Wodehouse

Sir? said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie. — P.G. Wodehouse

Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound. — P.G. Wodehouse

I left him thinking it over. If I were a bookie, I should feel justified in offering a hundred to eight against."
"You can't have approached him properly. I might have known you would muck it up," said young Bingo. Which, considering what I had been through for his sake, struck me as a good bit sharper than the serpent's tooth. — P.G. Wodehouse

I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind. — P.G. Wodehouse

I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going deep down into life and not caring a damn ... — P.G. Wodehouse

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen — P.G. Wodehouse

The ideal adventurer needs ... the quality of not being content to mind his own affairs ... — P.G. Wodehouse

Flowers are happy things. — P.G. Wodehouse

If England wants a happy, well-fed aristocracy, she mustn't have wars. She can't have it both ways. — P.G. Wodehouse

Why has the car stopped?"
"Ah!" I said with manly frankness that became me well. "There you have me."
You see, I'm one of those birds who drive a lot but don't know the first thing about the works. The policy I pursue is to get aboard, prod the self-starter, and leave the rest to Nature. If anything goes wrong, I scream for an A.A. scout. It's a system that answers admirably as a rule, but on the present occasion it blew a fuse owing to the fact that there wasn't an A.A. scout within miles. — P.G. Wodehouse

I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping. — P.G. Wodehouse

I shuttered from hairdo to shoe-sole — P.G. Wodehouse

A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart. — P.G. Wodehouse

I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet? — P.G. Wodehouse

He will lunch with you at your flat tomorrow at one-thirty. Please remember that he drinks no wine, strongly disapproves of smoking, and can only eat the simplest food, owing to an impaired digestion. Do not offer him coffee, for he considers it the root of half the nerve-trouble in the world."
"I should think a dog-biscuit and a glass of water would about meet the case, what?"
"Bertie!"
"Oh, all right. Merely persiflage."
"Now it is precisely that sort of idiotic remark that would be calculated to arouse Sir Roderick's worst suspicions. — P.G. Wodehouse

Mike's emotion took him back to the phraseology of school days.
'You are an ass! — P.G. Wodehouse

Filled with a coward rage that dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, Lord Emsworth coughed a cough that was undisguisedly a bronchial white flag. — P.G. Wodehouse

He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom. — P.G. Wodehouse

I wouldn't have a face like that,' proceeded the child, with a good deal of earnestness, 'not if you gave me a million dollars.' He thought for a moment, then corrected himself. 'Two million dollars!' he added. — P.G. Wodehouse

I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons."
"England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons."
"Tolerably so, sir."
"No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?"
"Presumably not, sir."
"And what sort of a specimen is this one?"
"I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance."
"Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?"
"No, sir. I should not care to venture such liberal odds. — P.G. Wodehouse

Years before, when a boy, and romantic as most boys are, his lordship had sometimes regretted that the Emsworths, though an ancient clan, did not possess a Family Curse. How little he had suspected that he was shortly to become the father of it. — P.G. Wodehouse

He looked at me like Lillian Gish coming out of a swoon.
"Is this Bertie Wooster talking?" he said, pained.
"Yes, it jolly well is!"
"Bertie, old man," said Bingo, patting me gently here and there, "reflect! We were at school - "
"Oh, all right! — P.G. Wodehouse

she was usually keenly susceptible to weather conditions and reveled in sunshine like a kitten. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

Just as you say, sir. There is a letter on the tray, sir."
"By Jove, Jeeves, that was practically potry. Rhymed, did you notice? — P.G. Wodehouse

Now look here, old friend," I said. "I know your bally heart is broken and all that, and at some future time I shall be delighted to hear all about it, but - "
"I didn't come to talk about that."
"No? Good egg!"
"The past," said young Bingo, "is dead. Let us say no more about it."
"Right-o!"
"I have been wounded to the very depths of my soul, but don't speak about it."
"I won't."
"Ignore it. Forget it."
"Absolutely!"
I hadn't seen him so dashed reasonable for days. — P.G. Wodehouse

A lesser moustache, under the impact of that quick, agonised expulsion of breath, would have worked loose at the roots. — P.G. Wodehouse

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. — P.G. Wodehouse

One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. — P.G. Wodehouse

A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them. — P.G. Wodehouse

On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience. — P.G. Wodehouse

The first of the telegrams arrived shortly after noon, and Jeeves brought it in with the before-luncheon snifter. It was from Aunt Dahlia, operating from Market Snodsbury, a small town of sorts a mile or two along the main road as it leaves her country seat.
It ran as follows:

Come at once. Travers.

And when I say it puzzled me like the dickens, I am understating it, if anything. As mysterious a communication, I considered, as was ever flashed over the wires. I studied it in a profound reverie for the best part of two dry Martinis and a dividend. I read it backwards. I read it forwards. As a matter of fact, I have a sort of recollection of even smelling it. But it still baffled me. — P.G. Wodehouse

Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur. — P.G. Wodehouse

I am pitching it feebly," said young Bingo earnestly. "You haven't heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I've got. Bertie," he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, "you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to name only tow, will say when they see me referred to in print as "half god, half prattling, mischievous child"?"
I jolly well could
"She doesn't say that?"I gasped.
"She certainly does. And when I tell you that I selected that particular quotation because it's about the only one I can stand hearing spoken, you will realise what I'm up against. — P.G. Wodehouse

I drew a deepish breath. — P.G. Wodehouse

I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this. — P.G. Wodehouse

No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka bottle empty. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love.
A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species. — P.G. Wodehouse

Conversationally, I am like a clockwork toy. I have to be set going. — P.G. Wodehouse

XVIII. THE LOCHINVAR METHOD XIX. ON THE LAKE XX. A LESSON IN PICQUET — P.G. Wodehouse

[On writing Jeeves and Wooster stories]:
You tell yourself that you can take Jeeves stories or leave them alone, that one more can't possibly hurt you, because you know you can pull up whenever you feel like it, but it is merely wish-full thinking. The craving has gripped you and there is no resisting it.
You have passed the point of no return. — P.G. Wodehouse

One of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am unable at the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the time being has slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old situation. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

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

He had never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about bloodstains would have filled a library. — P.G. Wodehouse

Tut!' I said. 'What did you say?' 'I said "Tut!"' 'Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at. — P.G. Wodehouse

The cheers of the multitude frequently act like a powerful drug upon young gentlemen with inferiority complexes. — P.G. Wodehouse

All political meetings are very much alike. Somebody gets up and introduces the speaker of the evening, and then the speaker of the evening says at great length what he thinks of the scandalous manner in which the Government is behaving or the iniquitous goings-on of the Opposition. From time to time confederates in the audience rise and ask carefully rehearsed questions, and are answered fully and satisfactorily by the orator. When a genuine heckler interrupts, the orator either ignores him, or says haughtily that he can find him arguments but cannot find him brains. Or, occasionally, when the question is an easy one, he answers it. A quietly conducted political meeting is one of England's most delightful indoor games. When the meeting is rowdy, the audience has more fun, but the speaker a good deal less. — P.G. Wodehouse

We part, then, for the nonce, do we?'
'I fear so, sir.'
'You take the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I shall miss you, Jeeves.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Who was that chap who was always beefing about gazelles?'
'The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well, it was sure to die.'
'It's the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don't mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?'
'Not at all, sir. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it. — P.G. Wodehouse

One of the advantages a sister has when arguing with a brother is that she is under no obligation to be tactful. If she wishes to tell him that he is an idiot and ought to have his head examined, she can do so and, going further, can add that it is a thousand pities that no-one ever thought of smothering him with a pillow in his formative years. — P.G. Wodehouse

This woman always made Freddie feel as if he were being disemboweled by some clumsy amateur. — P.G. Wodehouse

He sat looking at it with his eyes protruding in the manner popularized by snails, looking like something stuffed by a taxidermist who had learned his job from a correspondence course and had only got as far as lesson three. — P.G. Wodehouse

He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg. — P.G. Wodehouse