Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Furthermore, as is the case with so many of the younger literati, he dresses like a tramp cyclist, affecting turtleneck sweaters and grey flannel bags with a patch on the knee and conveying a sort of general suggestion of having been left out in the rain overnight in an ash can.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

252. “He had that indefinable air which comes to young men who have had to make their way up from a ten-dollar start.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

253. “I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

254. “Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

255. “I go in for what is known in the trade as ‘light writing’ and those who do that – humorists they are sometimes called – are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

256. “Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking. He.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

257. “A hoarse shout from within and a small china ornament whizzing past my head informed me that my old friend was at home.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

258. “Musical comedy is the Irish stew of drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

259. “Too often on such occasions one feels, as I feel so strongly with regard to poor old Stilton, that the kindly thing to do would be to seize the prospective bridegroom’s trousers in one’s teeth and draw him back from danger, as faithful dogs do to their masters on the edge of precipices on dark nights.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

260. “I started violently, as if some unseen hand had goosed me.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

261. “You could have knocked me down with a feather,′ said Lady Abbott, quite untruly. The feather had not been grown by bird that could have disturbed her balance for an instant.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

262. “It’s a hell for the poor, in New York. An iron, grinding city. It frightens you. It’s so big and hard and cruel. It takes the fight out of you.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

263. “Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

264. “What if he does think you the world’s premier louse? Don’t we all?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

265. “He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers – the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

266. “He picked up one of the dead bats and covered it with his handkerchief. ‘Somebody’s mother,’ he murmured reverently.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

267. “You know, with the most charitable feelings towards him, there are moments when you can’t help thinking that young Bingo ought to be in some sort of a home.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

268. “He had that extra four or five inches of neck which disqualifies a man for high honors in the beauty competition.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

269. “A man thinks he is being chilled steel – or adamant, if you prefer the expression – and suddenly the mists clear away and he finds that he has allowed a girl to talk him into something frightful. Samson had the same experience with Delilah.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

270. “I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

271. “There are moments in the life of every man when the impulse attacks him to sacrifice his future to the alluring gratification of the present.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

272. “A man who can set out in a cab for a fancy-dress ball and not get there is manifestly a poop of no common order.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

273. “In a cozy corner of the electric flame department of the infernal regions there stands a little silver gridiron. It is the private property of his Satanic majesty, and is reserved exclusively for the man who invented amateur theatricals.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

274. “Lady Underhill, having said all she had to say, recovered her breath and began to say it again. Frequent iteration was one of her strongest weapons. As her brother Edwin, who was fond of homely imagery, had often observed, she could talk the hind-leg off a donkey. “You.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

275. “I don’t suppose that anything you say or anything I say will make the slightest damn bit of difference. You need dynamite to dislodge an idea that has got itself firmly rooted in the public mind.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

276. “Every man is liable on occasion to behave like a sulky schoolboy.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

277. “I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread- and-butter-offering, yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia’s type nearly always like at first sight.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

278. “Lady Constance’s lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother’s head.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

279. “Into the emotional scene which followed I need not go in detail. You will have witnessed much the same sort of thing in the pictures, when the United States Marines arrive in the nick of time to relieve the beleaguered garrison. I may sum it up by saying that he fawned upon me.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

280. “The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

281. “His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

282. “You have the most infernal habit when anyone says the simplest thing to you, of letting your lower jaw drop and looking like a half-witted sheep staring over a fence.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

283. “They pointed out that the friendship between the two artistes had always been a by-word or whatever you called it. A well-read Egg summed it up by saying they were like Thingummy and what’s-his-name.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

284. “The cheers of the multitude frequently act like a powerful drug upon young gentlemen with inferiority complexes.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

285. “I will be your wife, Bertie.’ There didn’t seem much to say to this except ‘Oh, thanks.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

286. “This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

287. “She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’”

— P. G. Wodehouse

288. “While not exactly disgruntled, he was far from feeling gruntled. He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

289. “Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

290. “How’s the weather, Jeeves?’ ‘Exceptionally clement, sir.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

291. “There’s too much of that where-every-prospect-pleases-and-only-man-is-vile stuff buzzing around for my taste.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

292. “I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

293. “She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn’t steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

294. “If this is Upper Silesia, what on earth must Lower Silesia be like?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

295. “And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

296. “Remember what the poet Shakespeare said, Jeeves? ‘Exit hurriedly, pursued by a bear.’ You’ll find it in one of his plays.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

297. “I’m not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

298. “Mr Howard Saxby, literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

299. “I can detach myself from the world. If there is a better world to detach oneself from than the one functioning at the moment I have yet to hear of it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

300. “You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with ‘Welcome’ written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.”

— P. G. Wodehouse