P. G. Wodehouse Quotes - Page 11

Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.

Hugo?’ ‘Millicent?’ ‘Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.

It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore! The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky.

It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.

A girl who bonnets a policeman with an ashcan full of bottles is obviously good wife-and-mother timber.

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.

Golf acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman Emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip shot. If Cleopatra had been ousted in the first round of the Ladies' Singles, we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness.

You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with 'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.

But what is the love life of newts, if you boil it right down? Didn't you tell me once that they just waggled their tails at one another in the mating season?''Quite correct.' I shrugged my shoulders. 'Well all right, if they like it. But it's not my idea of molten passion.

Mere abuse is no criticism.

We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.

We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. "Nothing further Jeeves", I said with quiet dignity.

I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much.

I may as well tell you, here and now, that if you are going about the place thinking things pretty, you will never make a modern poet. Be poignant, man, be poignant!

Comedy is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous.

Birds, except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.

I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves.

Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.

I wouldn't have a face like that,' proceeded the child, with a good deal of earnestness, 'not if you gave me a million dollars.' He thought for a moment, then corrected himself. 'Two million dollars!' he added.

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.

I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind.

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.

His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.