Top 140 Jerome K. Jerome Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the oven and baked.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

52. “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

53. “What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

54. “I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

55. “All is vanity and everybody’s vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men – more so, if possible.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

56. “I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

57. “You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season...”

— Jerome K. Jerome

58. “The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

59. “It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

60. “Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

61. “What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

62. “Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

63. “But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

64. “We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

65. “It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

66. “People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

67. “That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

68. “Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

69. “Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

70. “It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

71. “Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one’s hand by skill to be made the best of.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

72. “Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

73. “Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

74. “The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

75. “Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

76. “The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

77. “Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, that he falls down and does reverence to.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

78. “Foolish people... When I say foolish people in this contemptuous way, I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there’s one person I do despise more than another, it’s the man who doesn’t think exactly the same on all topics as I do.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

79. “I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

80. “The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left – at least none worth speaking of.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

81. “Ambition is only vanity ennobled.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

82. “A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

83. “I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

84. “There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

85. “Idling has always been my strong point.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Strong Quotes

86. “We had just commenced the third course – the bread and jam – when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

87. “What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn’t elevate a cow.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

88. “No man alive has more sound commonsense than I have, if only I were capable of listening to myself. Do.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

89. “Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

90. “Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

91. “Give an average baby a fair chance, and if it doesn’t do something it oughtn’t to a doctor should be called in at once.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

92. “There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Fun Quotes

93. “It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

94. “Nature was beautiful, even in her tears.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

95. “There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet – except in dreams.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

96. “A cat’s got her own opinion of human beings. She don’t say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

97. “One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

98. “Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls are ever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watch the flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them all are the shadows of our own dead selves.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

99. “We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of – but we never love again.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

100. “No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love’s handmaids are our life-long friends. Respect, and admiration, and affection, our doors may always be left open for, but their great celestial master, in his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of – but we never love again.”

— Jerome K. Jerome