Top 140 Jerome K. Jerome Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

2. “A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

3. “It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

4. “Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

5. “I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

6. “Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

7. “We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

8. “Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

9. “It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

10. “When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is constantly in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

11. “A boy’s muscles move quicker than his thoughts.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

12. “I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Reading Quotes

13. “But we are so blind to our own shortcomings, so wide awake to those of others. Everything that happens to us is always the other person’s fault.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

14. “Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

15. “Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

16. “Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

17. “I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

18. “It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

19. “I don’t understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

20. “1lb beefstak, with 1pt bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff your head with things you don’t understand.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

21. “Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

22. “Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

23. “Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

24. “It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

25. “It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man’s life – the priceless moments that will never come back to him again – being wasted in a mere brutish sleep.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

26. “If you are foolish enough to be contented, don’t show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don’t you won’t get any.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

27. “Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

28. “I don’t know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

29. “Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

30. “There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

31. “The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

32. “It is no more effort for a man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of habit.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

33. “When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

34. “I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Fun Quotes

35. “Harris’s fixed ideas that he can sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among those of Harris’s friends who have heard him try, is that he can’t and never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

36. “Better to work and fail than to sleep one’s life away.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

37. “We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

38. “The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

39. “I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Book Quotes

40. “If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do...”

— Jerome K. Jerome

41. “Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

42. “We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

43. “A glass of wine often makes me a better man than hearing a sermon.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

44. “It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

45. “Swearing relieves the feelings – that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn’t answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

46. “The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

47. “Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

48. “I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

49. “A good woman’s arms round a man’s neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

50. “Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon that wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it, or tell the mystery they know. Once.”

— Jerome K. Jerome