Wodehouse quotes
Mar. 31st, 2005 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieBrilliantly hilarious stuff behind the lj cut
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.
Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.
Flowers are happy things.
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.
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!"
He was built on large lines, and seemed to fill the room to overflowing. In physique he was not unlike what Primo Carnera would have been if Carnera hadn't stunted his growth by smoking cigarettes when a boy.
He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
P. G. Wodehouse re: his creative process
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.
Madeleine Basset laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh that had got her so disliked by the better element.
Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse.
The Bishop was talking to the local Master of Hounds about the difficulty he had in keeping his vicars off the incense.
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.
--from a dedication
Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.
Money in the Bank (1946)
It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes--the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat
had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
``Oh Bertie,'' she said in a low voice like beer trickling out of a jug, ``you ought not to be here!''
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express on the small of the back.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
You can't stick lighted matches between the toes of an English butler. He would raise his eyebrows and freeze you with a glance. You'd feel as if he had caught you using the wrong fork.
The Old Reliable (1951)
I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of course.
Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg, My Man Jeeves (1919)
The sort of house you look at and say to yourself, ``Somebody's Aunt lives there.''
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work.
My Man Jeeves (1919)
``That,'' I replied cordially, ``is what it doesn't do anything else but.''
Ukridge (1924)
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
The shock to Colonel Wedge of finding that what he had taken for a pile of old clothes was alive and a relation by marriage caused him to speak a little sharply.
Full Moon, (1956)
He had described Adela as looking like a Welsh rarebit about to come to the height of its fever, and it was such a Welsh rarebit at the critical stage of its preparation that she now resembled.
The Old Reliable (1951)
Uttered in a certain way--dragged out, if you know what I mean, and starting high up and going down into the lower register, the word ``Ah!'' can be as sinister and devastating as the word ``Ho!''
Jeeves and the Kid Clementina, Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
It was that strange, almost unearthly light which comes into the eyes of wronged uncles when they see a chance of getting a bit of their own back from erring nephews.
Uncle Dynamite (1948)
In the matter of shimmering into rooms the chappie [Jeeves] is rummy to a degree.
Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg, My Man Jeeves (1919)
'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
'Didn't Frankenstein get married?' 'Did he?' said Eggy. 'I don't know. I never met him.Harrow man, I expect.'
Laughing Gas (1936)
A chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him.
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.
ch 5 Alselm gets his chance, Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940)
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.
Ring for Jeeves (1953)
'I hate you, I hate you!' cried Madeline, a thing I didn't know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)
"Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?"
"The last, for choice, said Mike, "but I've only just arrived, so I don't know."
"The boy - what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?"
"Yes! Why, are you new?"
"Do I look as if I belonged here? I'm the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there's just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn'orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk. See?"
Mike said that he saw. Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old-world courtesy.
From "Mike and Psmith"
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.
Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.
Flowers are happy things.
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.
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!"
He was built on large lines, and seemed to fill the room to overflowing. In physique he was not unlike what Primo Carnera would have been if Carnera hadn't stunted his growth by smoking cigarettes when a boy.
He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
P. G. Wodehouse re: his creative process
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.
Madeleine Basset laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh that had got her so disliked by the better element.
Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse.
The Bishop was talking to the local Master of Hounds about the difficulty he had in keeping his vicars off the incense.
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.
--from a dedication
Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.
Money in the Bank (1946)
It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes--the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat
had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
``Oh Bertie,'' she said in a low voice like beer trickling out of a jug, ``you ought not to be here!''
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express on the small of the back.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
You can't stick lighted matches between the toes of an English butler. He would raise his eyebrows and freeze you with a glance. You'd feel as if he had caught you using the wrong fork.
The Old Reliable (1951)
I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of course.
Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg, My Man Jeeves (1919)
The sort of house you look at and say to yourself, ``Somebody's Aunt lives there.''
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work.
My Man Jeeves (1919)
``That,'' I replied cordially, ``is what it doesn't do anything else but.''
Ukridge (1924)
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
The shock to Colonel Wedge of finding that what he had taken for a pile of old clothes was alive and a relation by marriage caused him to speak a little sharply.
Full Moon, (1956)
He had described Adela as looking like a Welsh rarebit about to come to the height of its fever, and it was such a Welsh rarebit at the critical stage of its preparation that she now resembled.
The Old Reliable (1951)
Uttered in a certain way--dragged out, if you know what I mean, and starting high up and going down into the lower register, the word ``Ah!'' can be as sinister and devastating as the word ``Ho!''
Jeeves and the Kid Clementina, Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
It was that strange, almost unearthly light which comes into the eyes of wronged uncles when they see a chance of getting a bit of their own back from erring nephews.
Uncle Dynamite (1948)
In the matter of shimmering into rooms the chappie [Jeeves] is rummy to a degree.
Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg, My Man Jeeves (1919)
'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
'Didn't Frankenstein get married?' 'Did he?' said Eggy. 'I don't know. I never met him.Harrow man, I expect.'
Laughing Gas (1936)
A chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him.
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.
ch 5 Alselm gets his chance, Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940)
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.
Ring for Jeeves (1953)
'I hate you, I hate you!' cried Madeline, a thing I didn't know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)
"Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?"
"The last, for choice, said Mike, "but I've only just arrived, so I don't know."
"The boy - what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?"
"Yes! Why, are you new?"
"Do I look as if I belonged here? I'm the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there's just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn'orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk. See?"
Mike said that he saw. Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old-world courtesy.
From "Mike and Psmith"
