Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I’m a quiet, peaceful sort of bloke who has lived all his life in London, and I can’t stand the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I mean to say is, I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

152. “I have always had a suspicion that Aunt Dahlia, while invariably matey and bonhomous and seeming to take pleasure in my society, has a lower opinion of my intelligence than I quite like. Too often it is her practice to address me as ‘fathead’, and if I put forward any little thought or idea or fancy in her hearing it is apt to be greeted with the affectionate but jarring guffaw.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

153. “I attribute my whole success in life to a rigid observance of the fundamental rule – Never have yourself tattooed with any woman’s name, not even her initials.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

154. “You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

155. “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

156. “Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man’s friend.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

157. “She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

158. “Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

159. “But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.” “Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.” “He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London.” “I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

160. “He was as completely happy as only a fluffy-minded old man with excellent health and a large income can be.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

161. “No fair-minded girl objects to a certain tinge of jealousy. Kept within proper bounds, it is a compliment; it makes for piquancy; it is the gin in the ginger-beer of devotion. But it should be a condiment, not a fluid.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

162. “It is true of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the circumstances seem to demand it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

163. “I have been studying the principles of socialism deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. Ah, noble scheme! Me for it!”

— P. G. Wodehouse

164. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth, I remember Jeeves saying once, it is to have a thankless child, and it isn’t a dashed sight better having a thankless aunt.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

165. “Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

166. “If he had a mind, there was something on it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

167. “Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?” “The last, for choice,” said Mike, “but I’ve only just arrived, so I don’t know.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

168. “I was in rare fettle and the heart had touched a new high. I don’t know anything that braces one up like finding you haven’t got to get married after all.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

169. “I’m not much of a ladies’ man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

170. “In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

171. “She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

172. “Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

173. “No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

174. “She laughed – a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

175. “I felt as if I had stepped on the place where the last stair ought to have been, but wasn’t.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

176. “It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

177. “The stationmaster’s whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

178. “Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

179. “Brainy badinage of that sort is exchanged every day in the best society. You should hear dukes and earls! The wit! the esprit! The flow of soul!”

— P. G. Wodehouse

180. “Two tramps of supernatural exuberance called at the cottage shortly after breakfast to ask George, whom they had never even consulted about their marriages, to help support their wives and children.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

181. “I was back at the flat so quick that I nearly met myself coming out.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

182. “I’m bound to say I was not feeling entirely at my ease. There is something about the man that is calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

183. “No love could stand up against the sight of me in a sailor suit at the age of ten. I.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

184. “His spirit was willing, but his will was not spirited.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

185. “He shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you’re going to die in about five minutes.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

186. “One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

187. “If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

188. “A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

189. “Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one of those round, bulging kids.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

190. “It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

191. “She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says: ‘Guess who!”

— P. G. Wodehouse

192. “The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

193. “To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

194. “Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests!”

— P. G. Wodehouse

195. “In every romance you have to budget for the occasional dust-up.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

196. “Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

197. “One uses the verb ‘descend’ advisedly, for what is required is some word suggesting instantaneous activity. About Baxter’s progress from the second floor to the first there was nothing halting or hesitating. He, so to speak, did it now. Planting.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

198. “It looked something like a pen wiper and something like a piece of hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekinese puppy.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

199. “If you haven’t realised by this time that I love you, and always shall love you, and have never loved anybody else, and never shall love anybody else, you’re a fathead.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

200. “The only occupant of the more posh saloon bar was a godlike man in a bowler hat with grave, finely chiselled features and a head that stuck out at the back, indicating great brain power. To cut a long story short, Jeeves.”

— P. G. Wodehouse