P. G. Wodehouse quotes - page 3

As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that. (P. G. Wodehouse)
A certain critic-for such men, I regret to say, do exist-made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'. He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. (From preface)
P. G. Wodehouse
We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.
P. G. Wodehouse
I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves.
P. G. Wodehouse
It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.
P. G. Wodehouse
Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
P. G. Wodehouse
The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower-bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap.
P. G. Wodehouse
Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind.
P. G. Wodehouse
His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.
P. G. Wodehouse
There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.
P. G. Wodehouse
The stationmaster's whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass. (P. G. Wodehouse)
And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.
P. G. Wodehouse
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
P. G. Wodehouse
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.
P. G. Wodehouse
A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.
P. G. Wodehouse
Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?
P. G. Wodehouse
He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, 'Don't talk rot, old Tom Travers.' 'I am not accustomed to talk rot,' he said. 'Then, for a beginner,' I said, 'you do it dashed well.' And I think you will admit, boys and ladies and gentlemen, that that was telling him.
P. G. Wodehouse
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.
P. G. Wodehouse
... 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.
P. G. Wodehouse
We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolutely bally insult like the above.
P. G. Wodehouse
I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together. (P. G. Wodehouse)
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.
P. G. Wodehouse
I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra la la' as I did the lathering for I was feeling in mid season form this morning.
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'm] as broke as the ten commandments.
P. G. Wodehouse