Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

2. “Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

3. “There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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4. “I always strive, when I can, to spread sweetness and light. There have been several complaints about it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

5. “Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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6. “I always advise people never to give advice.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

7. “I expect I shall feel better after tea.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

8. “It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

9. “The trouble with cats is that they’ve got no tact.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

10. “It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

11. “And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

12. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Dunstable, it’s simply that I don’t trust you.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

13. “A little bit added to what you’ve already got gives you a little bit more.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

14. “Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

15. “Cheer up, Crips, and keep smiling. That’s the thing to do. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say ‘What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?’ Make you a lot of new friends.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

16. “Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

17. “Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant – better left unstirred.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

18. “An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

19. “A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

20. “His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see he loved like a thousand bricks.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

21. “I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

22. “She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

23. “One of the Georges,” said Psmith, “I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep a day – I cannot recall for the moment how many – made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. However, there you are. I’ve given you the main idea of the thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

24. “A man’s subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

25. “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

26. “Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who’s wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

27. “Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

28. “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

29. “The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

30. “Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

31. “She had more curves than a scenic railway.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

32. “My motto is ‘Love and let love’ – with the one stipulation that people who love in glass-houses should breathe on the windows.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

33. “Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

34. “I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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35. “To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

36. “That is life. Just one long succession of misunderstandings and rash acts and what not. Absolutely.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

37. “As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

38. “It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

39. “If men’s minds were like dominoes, surely his would be the double blank.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

40. “When you’re alone you don’t do much laughing.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

41. “Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

Featured in: Strong Quotes

42. “If girls realized their responsibilities they would be so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon the practice altogether. There are moments in a man’s life when a girl’s smile can have as important results as an explosion of dynamite.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

43. “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

44. “It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

45. “Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

46. “Woman is the unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem that we men can never hope to solve.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

47. “Work, the what’s-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d’you-call-it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

48. “Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

49. “He enjoys that perfect peace, that peace beyond all understanding, which comes to its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

50. “The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

— P. G. Wodehouse