Top 138 Quotes & Sayings by Jerome K. Jerome
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English author Jerome K. Jerome.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
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.
The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.
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.
Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.
We drink one another's health and spoil our own.
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do.
We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.
But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.
I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.
One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.
A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.
What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.
Idling has always been my strong point.
That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.
I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion.
Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug.
Cultivate a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.
A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.
A boy's muscles move quicker than his thoughts.
Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.
A glass of wine often makes me a better man than hearing a sermon.
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.
There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one.
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.
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.
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.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.... We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.
Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics.
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!
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.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.
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.
(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
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.
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.
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.
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.
The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.
If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.
Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs.
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