P. G. Wodehouse - Man Quotes

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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 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 outgeneralled this man 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
His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.

P. G. Wodehouse
'Have you ever seen Spode eat asparagus?'
'No.'
'Revolting. It alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word.'

P. G. Wodehouse
I've seen him a couple of times in the arena, and was profoundly impressed by his virtuosity. Rugby football is more or less a sealed book to me, I never having gone in for it, but even I could see he was good. The lissomness with which he moved hither and thither was most impressive, as was his homicidal ardour when doing what I believe is called tackling. Like the Canadian Mounted Police he always got his man, and when he did so the air was vibrant with the excited cries of the morticians in the audience making bids for the body.

P. G. Wodehouse
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
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
In all crises of human affairs there are two broad courses open to a man. He can stay where he is or he can go elsewhere.

P. G. Wodehouse
Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well.

P. G. Wodehouse
Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did.

P. G. Wodehouse
It is not mere technical skill that makes a man a golfer, it is the golfing soul.

P. G. Wodehouse
One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.

P. G. Wodehouse
There occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

P. G. Wodehouse
It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I've ever seen— this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.

P. G. Wodehouse
The only way…of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

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

P. G. Wodehouse
Smoking is just a habit. 'Tolstoy', she said, mentioning someone I hadn't met, 'says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers'. My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I know, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified.

P. G. Wodehouse
A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters.

P. G. Wodehouse
The junior partner of Caine and Cooper, though a man of blameless life, had one of those dark, saturnine faces which suggest a taste for the more sinister forms of crime, and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y. M. C. A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld.

P. G. Wodehouse
He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of mining.

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
'Can you dance?' said the girl. Lancelot gave a short, amused laugh. He was a man who never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing.

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
'Alf Todd,' said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, 'has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat's ear with a red-hot needle.'

P. G. Wodehouse
There was the man who seemed to be attempting to decieve his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard.

P. G. Wodehouse
Many bad golfers marry, feeling that a wife's loving solicitude may improve their game. But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and introspective. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success at the game induces a certain amount of decent humilty, which keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs he may achieve in other walks of life.

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

P. G. Wodehouse
He committed mayhem upon his person. He did everything to him that a man can do who is hampered with boxing gloves.

P. G. Wodehouse
At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack.

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
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