P. G. Wodehouse Quotes

379 Sourced Quotes

It began to be borne in upon Lord Ickenham that in planning to appeal to the Duke's better feelings he had omitted to take into his calculations the fact that he might not have any.

P. G. Wodehouse
I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling on an ammunition dump, but he didn't. Instead, he continued to exhibit that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they're fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes.

P. G. Wodehouse
It is true of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the circumstances seem to demand it.

P. G. Wodehouse
His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions.

P. G. Wodehouse
I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast.

P. G. Wodehouse
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

P. G. Wodehouse
Well, there it is. That's Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.

P. G. Wodehouse
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.

P. G. Wodehouse
However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck.

P. G. Wodehouse
A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant.

P. G. Wodehouse
Half a league Half a league Half a league onward With a hey-nonny-nonny And a hot cha-cha.

P. G. Wodehouse
He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect.

P. G. Wodehouse
'Oh Brancepeth,' said the girl, her voice trembling, 'why haven't you any money? If only you had the merest pittance - enough for a flat in Mayfair and a little weekend place in the country somewhere and a couple of good cars and a villa in the South of France and a bit of trout fishing on some decent river, I would risk all for love.'

P. G. Wodehouse
His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle.

P. G. Wodehouse
Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.

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

P. G. Wodehouse
He had that self-reproachful feeling of having been remiss which comes to Generals who wake up one morning to discover that they have carelessly allowed themselves to be outflanked.

P. G. Wodehouse
"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.

P. G. Wodehouse
'You must remember, Father,' said Mavis, in a voice which would have had an Eskimo slapping his ribs and calling for the steam-heat, 'that this girl was probably very pretty. So many of these New York girls are. That would, of course, explain Frederick's behaviour.'

P. G. Wodehouse
Whenever I meet Ukridge's Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and—what is more—of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave.

P. G. Wodehouse