Top 312 Quotes & Sayings by P. G. Wodehouse - Page 3

She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.

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.

Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.

She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season

I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.

There are three things in the world that he held in the smallest esteem - slugs, poets and caddies with hiccups.

When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.

It is the glorious uncertainty of golf that makes it the game it is.

It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.

Statisticians estimate that crime among good golfers is lower than in any class of the community except possibly bishops.

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

There's too much of that where-every-prospect-pleases-and-only-man-is-vile stuff buzzing around for my taste.

It was a silver cow. But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.

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

Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.

I don't know if you know it, J.B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design.

The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

If it were not for quotations, conversations between gentlemen would consist of an endless series of 'what-ho!'s.

I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves, I said, but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?

Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing.

The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.

This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.

As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire.

The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.

What ho!" I said. "What ho!" said Motty. "What ho! What ho!" "What ho! What ho! What ho!" After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

I laughed derisively. "For goodness' sake, don't start gargling now. This is serious." "I was laughing." "Oh, were you? Well, I'm glad to see you taking it in this merry spirit." "Derisively," I explained.

As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.

...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.

There was the man who seemed to be attempting to decieve his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard.

Just another proof, of course, of what I often say - it takes all sorts to make a world.

Woman is the unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem we men can never hope to solve.

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.

It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.

One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.

I'm all for rational enjoyment, and so forth, but I think a fellow makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan

I can detach myself from the world. If there is a better world to detach oneself from than the one functioning at the moment I have yet to hear of it.

The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.

You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.

You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.

I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis.

You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.

It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.

The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.

I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.

Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.

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.

Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball, which presents no difficulties whetever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock. I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I'd strangle him. But I suppose he's been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.

No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.

There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.

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.

You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz.

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

Employers are like horses — they require management.

In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’ ‘Do what?’ ‘Not strike lambs