Top 100 P.G. Wodehouse Quotes
#1. You agreee with me that the situation is a lulu?
Certainly, a somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, Sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
#2. Don't forget that in pushing policemen into duck ponds the follow through is everything.
P.G. Wodehouse
#4. And of all the objects under my immediate advisement I noted this yacht with the most pleasure and approval. White in colour, in size resembling a young liner, it lent a decided tone to the Chuffnell Regis foreshore.
P.G. Wodehouse
#5. I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts or feelings.
P.G. Wodehouse
#6. A little bit added to what you've already got gives you a little bit more.
P.G. Wodehouse
#7. Many a time in the past, when an active operator on Wall Street, he had done things ... which would have caused raised eyebrows on the fo'c'sle of a pirate sloop - and done them without a blush.
P.G. Wodehouse
#8. There's no getting away from the fact that, if ever a man required watching, it's Steggles. Machiavelli could have taken his correspondence course.
P.G. Wodehouse
#9. One of the rooted convictions of each member of the human race is that he or she is able without difficulty to open a door which has baffled their fellows.
P.G. Wodehouse
#10. About two hours afterwards Gethryn discovered a suitable retort, but, coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to repartees, refrained from speaking it.
P.G. Wodehouse
#11. It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.
P.G. Wodehouse
#12. The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.
P.G. Wodehouse
#13. It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
P.G. Wodehouse
#14. Wait a minute while I think," said Miss Peavey.
There was a pause. Miss Peavey sat with knit brows.
"How would it be ... " ventured Mr. Cootes.
"Cheese it!" said Miss Peavey.
Mr. Cootes cheesed it.
P.G. Wodehouse
#15. Bertie, old man," said young Bingo earnestly, "for the last two weeks I've been comforting the sick to such an extent that, if I had a brother and you brought him to me on a sick-bed at this moment, by Jove, old man, I'd heave a brick at him.
P.G. Wodehouse
#16. No novelists any good except me. Sovietski
yah! Nastikoff
bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.
P.G. Wodehouse
#17. Nobody ever wants to do anything except what they are not allowed to do.
P.G. Wodehouse
#18. I don't know why it is, but I've never been able to bear with fortitude anything in the shape of a kid with golden curls. Confronted with one, I feel the urge to step on him or drop things on him from a height.
P.G. Wodehouse
#19. The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it.
P.G. Wodehouse
#20. A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
P.G. Wodehouse
#21. Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a much-maligned man King Herod was.
P.G. Wodehouse
#22. 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
#23. Mary, in these days, simply couldn't see that he was on the earth. She looked round him, above him, and through him, but never at him;
P.G. Wodehouse
#24. I wonder what Tommy Morris would have had to say to all this number 6-iron, number 12-iron, number 28-iron stuff. He probably wouldn't have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling.
P.G. Wodehouse
#27. This Miss Wooster that I knew married a man named Spenser. Was she any relation?"
"She is my Aunt Agatha," I replied, and I spoke with a good deal of bitterness, trying to suggest by my manner that he was exactly the sort of man, in my opinion, who would know my Aunt Agatha.
P.G. Wodehouse
#29. To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.
P.G. Wodehouse
#30. It would seem to be an inexorable law of Nature that no man shall shine at both ends. If he has a high forehead and a thirst for wisdom, his fox-trotting (if any) shall be as the staggerings of the drunken; while, if he is a good dancer, he is nearly always petrified from the ears upward.
P.G. Wodehouse
#31. It just shows how one half of the world doesn't know how three quarts live.
P.G. Wodehouse
#32. One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.
P.G. Wodehouse
#33. She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when".
P.G. Wodehouse
#34. I love that girl, Bertie," he went on, when he'd finished coughing.
"Yes. Nice girl, of course."
He eyed me with deep loathing.
"Don't speak of her in that horrible casual way. She's an angel. An angel!
P.G. Wodehouse
#35. Presently, I was aware that Jeeves was with me. I hadn't heard him come in, but you often don't with Jeeves. He just streams silently from spot A to spot B, like some gas.
P.G. Wodehouse
#36. I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad. The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
'Good-bye, Jeeves,' I said.
'Good-bye, sir.'
And I staggered out.
P.G. Wodehouse
#37. The Primrose Way. National problems had ceased to interest the citizens. Local problems left them cold. Their minds were riveted to the exclusion of all else on the problem of how to secure seats.
P.G. Wodehouse
#38. I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.
P.G. Wodehouse
#40. I've found, as a general rule of life, that the things you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out not so bad after all.
P.G. Wodehouse
#41. 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
#42. It is not mere technical skill that makes a man a golfer, it is the golfing soul.
P.G. Wodehouse
#43. Well, you've taken a weight off my mind."
"A mind, I should imagine, scarcely constructed to bear great
weights.
P.G. Wodehouse
#44. He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
P.G. Wodehouse
#45. There's no doubt about it, being a policeman warps a man's mind and ruins that sunny faith in his fellow human beings which is the foundation of a lovable character. There seems to be no way of avoiding this.
P.G. Wodehouse
#46. He looked like a vulture dissatisfied with its breakfast corpse.
P.G. Wodehouse
#47. He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip. Just right, as usual. Not too hot, not too sweet, not to weak, not too strong, not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer. A most amazing cove, Jeeves. So dashed competent in every respect.
P.G. Wodehouse
#48. I had one of those ideas I do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class.
P.G. Wodehouse
#50. a chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him.
P.G. Wodehouse
#51. He was always inclined to read a fictitious sombreness into things when the shadows began to creep over the world and it was still too early for a cocktail.
P.G. Wodehouse
#52. Lady Kimbuck gave tongue. She was Lord Evenwood's sister. She spent a very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various branches of her family.
P.G. Wodehouse
#53. He had that extra four or five inches of neck which disqualifies a man for high honors in the beauty competition
P.G. Wodehouse
#55. 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
#56. As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.
P.G. Wodehouse
#57. Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur.
P.G. Wodehouse
#59. Mathematicians among my readers do not need to be informed that " ... " is the algebraical sign representing a blend of wheeze, croak, and hiccough.
P.G. Wodehouse
#60. He must be provided with a claque. It will be your task, Jeeves,
P.G. Wodehouse
#61. Gussie and I, as I say, had rather lost touch, but all the same I was exercised about the poor fish, as I am about all my pals, close or distant, who find themselves treading upon Life's banana skins.
P.G. Wodehouse
#62. I couldn't have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.
P.G. Wodehouse
#63. As a child of eight Mr. Trout had once kissed a girl of six under the mistletoe at a Christmas party, but there his sex life had come to abrupt halt.
P.G. Wodehouse
#64. Well, you certainly are the most wonderfully woolly baa-lamb that ever stepped.
P.G. Wodehouse
#65. Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit."
"Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction.
P.G. Wodehouse
#66. They pointed out that the friendship between the two artistes had always been a by-word or whatever you called it. A well-read Egg summed it up by saying they were like Thingummy and what's-his-name
P.G. Wodehouse
#67. The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.
P.G. Wodehouse
#68. 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
#69. Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P.G. Wodehouse
#70. Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.
P.G. Wodehouse
#71. It is fatal to let any dog know that he is funny, for he immediately loses his head and starts hamming it up.
P.G. Wodehouse
#72. Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster.
P.G. Wodehouse
#73. You don't get any five shillings out of me.' 'Oh, all right.' He sat silent for a space. 'Things happen to guys that don't kick in their protection money,' he said dreamily.
P.G. Wodehouse
#74. The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.
P.G. Wodehouse
#75. Very rapidly now Freddie realised that what he had been wishing for was a partner to share the perils of this enterprise which he had so rashly undertaken. In fact, not so much to share them as to take them off his shoulders altogether.
P.G. Wodehouse
#76. Mr Wingham has the advantage of being on the premises. He and the young lady play duets after dinner, which acts as a bond. Mr Little on these occasions, I understand, prowls about in the road, chafing visibly.
P.G. Wodehouse
#77. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry."
"But, dash it all ... "
"Yes! You should be breeding children to ... "
"No, really, I say, please!" I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women's clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn't in the smoking-room.
P.G. Wodehouse
#80. The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
P.G. Wodehouse
#81. The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg.
P.G. Wodehouse
#82. There is nothing that so satisfactorily unites individuals who have been so unfortunate as to quarrel amongst themselves as a strong mutual dislike for some definite person.
P.G. Wodehouse
#83. Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
P.G. Wodehouse
#84. Confidence, of course is an admirable asset to a golfer, but it should be an unspoken confidence. It is perilous to put it into speech. The gods of golf lie in wait to chasten the presumptious.
P.G. Wodehouse
#85. Didn't Frankenstein get married?"
"Did he?" said Eggy. "I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.
P.G. Wodehouse
#86. 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.
P.G. Wodehouse
#87. Honestly, Ronnie. I know it hurts your head to think, but try just for a moment.
P.G. Wodehouse
#88. A lesser moustache, under the impact of that quick, agonised expulsion of breath, would have worked loose at the roots.
P.G. Wodehouse
#89. After all, golf is only a game,' said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they're saying.
P.G. Wodehouse
#90. The ice was not only broken; it was shivered into a million fragments
P.G. Wodehouse
#91. I was endeavouring to adjust the faculties, which were in urgent need of a bit of first-aid treatment.
P.G. Wodehouse
#92. This woman always made Freddie feel as if he were being disemboweled by some clumsy amateur.
P.G. Wodehouse
#93. And, as I mused, the years fell away, hair sprouted on the vast steppes of my head, where never hair has been almost within the memory of man.
P.G. Wodehouse
#94. I turned round and Jeeves shied like a startled mustang.
P.G. Wodehouse
#96. As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
P.G. Wodehouse
#97. As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again.
P.G. Wodehouse
#98. Aunt Agatha is like an elephant- not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.
P.G. Wodehouse
#100. She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued.
P.G. Wodehouse
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
