P.G. Wodehouse Quotes - Page 3

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start.", Issue 64, Winter 1975)
P.G. Wodehouse
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.
P.G. Wodehouse
From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
P.G. Wodehouse
I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.
P.G. Wodehouse
She was, in short, melted by his distress, as so often happens with the female sex. Poets have frequently commented on this. You are probably familiar with the one who said, "Oh, woman in our hours of ease tum tumty tiddly something please, when something something something brow, a something something something thou.
P.G. Wodehouse
The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.
P.G. Wodehouse
There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent.Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.
P.G. Wodehouse
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
P.G. Wodehouse
I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.
P.G. Wodehouse
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
It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
P.G. Wodehouse
Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.
P.G. Wodehouse
I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so.""It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
P.G. Wodehouse
As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
P.G. Wodehouse
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
In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.
P.G. Wodehouse
You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.
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
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
I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.
P.G. Wodehouse
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
Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
P.G. Wodehouse
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.
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
If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.
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
Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy'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's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.
P.G. Wodehouse
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
P.G. Wodehouse
Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
P.G. Wodehouse
There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'""The mood will pass, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
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
He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
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
Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.
P.G. Wodehouse
The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.
P.G. Wodehouse