P. G. Wodehouse Quotes

It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.

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

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

I expect I shall feel better after tea.

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.

Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who's wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill.

The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.

Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.

The stationmaster's whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass.

The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact.

I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover-the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all.

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

"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 are saying.

And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.

New York is a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up just as the rest is going to bed.

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

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

The spine, and I do not attempt to conceal the fact, had become soluble, in the last degree.

you ever have that feeling when you step down onto a footstep that isn't there?

Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

I should think it extremely improbable that anyone ever wrote for money. Naturally, when he has written something, he wants to get as much for it as he can, but that is a very different thing from writing for money.

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

As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.

He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

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

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 can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing.

Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

I always strive, when I can, to spread sweetness and light. There have been several complaints about it.

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.

My motto is 'Love and let love' - with the one stipulation that people who love in glass-houses should breathe on the windows.

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.' Yes, sir?' Is it really a frost?' A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.' But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.' Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.' He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.' I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.

When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.

There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'" "The mood will pass, sir.

I think the success of every novel - if it's a novel of action - depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?

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.

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life.

An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away.

[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments.

Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

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.

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.

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.

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

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.