P. G. Wodehouse Quotes

379 Sourced Quotes

'The modern young man,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.'

P. G. Wodehouse
'You're one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It's a great gift.'

P. G. Wodehouse
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.

P. G. Wodehouse
I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected.

P. G. Wodehouse
As far as the eye could reach, I found myself gazing on a surging sea of aunts. There were tall aunts, short aunts, stout aunts, thin aunts, and an aunt who was carrying on a conversation in a low voice to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention.

P. G. Wodehouse
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.

P. G. Wodehouse
On his good mornings, I don't suppose there are more than a handful of men in the W. 1 postal district of London swifter to spot oompus-boompus than Bertram Wooster, and this was one of my particularly good mornings. I saw the whole hideous plot.

P. G. Wodehouse
They pointed out that the friendship between the two artistes had always been a by-word or whatever you called it. A well-read Egg summed it up by saying they were like Thingummy and what's-his-name

P. G. Wodehouse
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.

P. G. Wodehouse
I laughed derisively. "For goodness' sake, don't start gargling now. This is serious." "I was laughing." "Oh, were you? Well, I'm glad to see you taking it in this merry spirit." "Derisively," I explained.

P. G. Wodehouse
Sooner or later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn't want to go there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a stuffed eelskin.

P. G. Wodehouse
What with excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not, the afternoon passed quite happily.

P. G. Wodehouse
He had never acted in his life, and couldn't play the pin in Pinafore.

P. G. Wodehouse
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.

P. G. Wodehouse
... his head emerged cautiously, like that of a snail taking a look around after a thunderstorm.

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
I like a man to be a clean, strong, upstanding Englishman who can look his gnu in the face and put an ounce of lead in it.

P. G. Wodehouse
And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other at the dog races.

P. G. Wodehouse
He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

P. G. Wodehouse
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
We exchanged a meaning glance. Or, rather, two meaning glances, I giving him one and he giving me the other.

P. G. Wodehouse
I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.

P. G. Wodehouse
[of a character in "The Man Who Gave Up Smoking" who is suffering from a hangover]... the noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort.

P. G. Wodehouse
I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare — or, if not, it's some equally brainy bird — 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. And what I'm driving at is that the man is perfectly right.

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

P. G. Wodehouse