P. G. Wodehouse famous quotes

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

#Death #Sports #Humorous

There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Friendship #Beautiful #Reading

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 by 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 out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Summer #Regret #Children

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

#Humorous #Numbers #Voice

I always advise people never to give advice.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Inspirational #Humorous #Giving

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

#Might #Moscow #Said

It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Hair #Devil #Red

What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Cities #Yield #Temptation

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

#Life #Sorry #Humorous

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Writing #Want

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

#Real #Giving #People

Flowers are happy things.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Flower

Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Hair #Red #Opinion

One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth,
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Telling The Truth #Life Is #Moments

I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Ideas #Lemons

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Golf #Years #May

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

#Funny #Dark #Theatre

Routine is the death to heroism.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Death #Routine #Heroism

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Writing #Men #Echoes

[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Expression #Nephew #Wish

He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Inspirational #People #Intelligence

Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Fate #Boxing #Gloves

Always 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.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Speed #Dialogue #Prose

Golf is the Great Mystery.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Golf #Mystery

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Humorous #Writing #Ladders

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

#Baby #Father #Sadness

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours. From such masterful spirits she turns away. But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Children #Humble #Good Luck

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.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Writing #Thinking #Want

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

#Fate #Feelings #Fancy

Employers are like horses — they require management.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Horse #Management #Employers

-'What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?' There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Ties #Matter #Jeeves

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 speak French.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Men #Looks #Faces

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

#Funny #Dog

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

#Girl #Two #Brain

When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Love #Girl #Bombs

Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Football #Strong #Mean

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

#Attitude #Would Be

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

#Humorous #Hair #Age

Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Funny #Character #Golf

Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Tea #Want #Hell

I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Half

Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Sarcastic #Looks #Chrysanthemums

He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Drunk #Cups #Looks

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Regret #Crime #Remorse

It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Autumn #Air #Blood

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

#Memories #Sleep #Night

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Life #Men #Done

I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Heart #Breakfast #Jeeves

Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Mind #Soup #Poor

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#White #Dry #Martini

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

#Men #Air #Selfish People

Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Marriage #Prolonging #Process

Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Fun #Illegal #Fattening

Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Alcohol #Misunderstood #Vitamins

Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Cat #Class #Egypt

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

#Names #Mind #Age

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Stories #Problem #Come Up

To find a man's true character, play golf with him.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Character #Golf #Men

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Women #Age #Lucky

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Congratulations #Writing #Winning

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Writing #Stories

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Writing #Typewriters #Curse

The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Country #Light #House

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.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Lying #Golf #Men

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say 'when.'
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Women #Clothes #Moral

There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Sheep #Sailing #Jeeves

Well, you know what the Fulham Road's like. If your top-hat blows off into it, it has about as much chance as a rabbit at a dogshow.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Blow #Chance

Mere abuse is no criticism.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Abuse #Criticism

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

#Wave #Stem

Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

If it were not for quotations, conversations between gentlemen would consist of an endless series of 'what-ho!'s.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

#Gentleman #Quotations