Top 140 Jerome K. Jerome Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

102. “It all comes of being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

103. “Think of the man who first tried German sausage.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

104. “He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

105. “There is nothing more remarkable in human sociology than our attitude towards the institution of marriage.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

106. “Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

107. “I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent’s Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

108. “How good one feels when one is full – how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! 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

109. “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. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

110. “There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want to talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter where – anywhere.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

111. “And when they reached St. Albans, there would be that wretched couple, kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these folks would go and be pirates until the marriage was over.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

112. “The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

113. “Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

114. “Noi eravamo come i cavalieri dell’antica leggenda, che veleggiavano lungo un mistico lago verso l’ignoto regno del crepuscolo, verso la sconfinata terra del tramonto. Ma non arrivammo nella terra del tramonto, andammo a finire contro il barchino da pesca sul quale stavano pescando i tre vecchi.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

115. “The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

116. “If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

Featured in: Strong Quotes

117. “I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

118. “There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas – something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

119. “We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

120. “Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

121. “She rode a bicycle. It was unwomanly, then, to ride a bicycle. There were so many things, in those days, that were unwomanly to do. It must have been quite difficult to be a woman, and remain so day after day.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

122. “Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,” is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, “the average person,” but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

123. “Affection will burn cheerily when the white flame of love is flickered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day and be piled up ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

124. “Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

125. “Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their own way, but we, poor mortals in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

126. “One example of a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs – your fireworks won’t go off while the crowd is around.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

127. “Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

128. “There are many families where the whole interest of life is centered upon the dog.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

129. “I could not conjure up one melancholy fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

130. “Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”

— Jerome K. Jerome

131. “Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!”

— Jerome K. Jerome

132. “The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

133. “Cultivate,” I said, “a sense of humor. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

134. “There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

135. “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. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father – a noble, pious man.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

136. “Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house-out of place and in the way.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

137. “It is in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of existence lies.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

138. “It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

139. “It’s really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

140. “The more the other party thinks he’s having his way, the easier always to get your own.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

141. “One of the problems of social life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman’s desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

142. “I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I loved that animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

143. “Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

144. “Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and “Forward!” is our motto.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

145. “They took him to Wagner festivals and Burne-Jones’s private views. They read him all the minor poets. They booked seats for him at all Ibsen’s plays. They introduced him into all the most soulful circles of artistic society. His days were one long feast of other people’s enjoyments.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

146. “In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was – What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.”

— Jerome K. Jerome