Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Not only had its expression, as he spoke of Pauline, been that of a stuffed frog with a touch of the Soul’s Awakening about it, but it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

352. “You know, Bayliss,” said Jimmy thoughtfully, rolling over on the couch, “life is peculiar, not to say odd. You never know what is waiting for you round the corner. You start the day with the fairest prospects, and before nightfall everything is as rocky and ding-basted as stig tossed full of doodlegammon.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

353. “The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

354. “The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

355. “There are three things in the world that he held in the smallest esteem – slugs, poets and caddies with hiccups.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

356. “For a time the broken heart, and then suddenly the healing conviction that one is jolly well out of it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

357. “At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

358. “It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

359. “Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

360. “It was one of those heavy, sultry afternoons when nature seems to be saying to itself, ‘Now, shall I, or shall I not, scare the pants off these people with a hell of a thunderstorm?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

361. “I should think it extremely improbable that anyone ever wrote for money. Naturally, when he has written something, he wants to get as much for it as he can, but that is a very different thing from writing for money.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

362. “It suddenly struck me so forcibly, one morning while I was having my bath, that I hadn’t a worry on earth that I began to sing like a bally nightingale as I sploshed the sponge about. It seemed to me that everything was absolutely for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

363. “What ho, Stinker.’ ‘Hallo, Bertie.’ ‘Long time since we met.’ ‘It is a bit, isn’t it?’ ‘I hear you’re a curate now.’ ‘Yes, that’s right.’ ‘How are the souls?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

364. “The wretched man seemed fully conscious of his position.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

365. “It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

366. “She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

367. “He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip. Just right, as usual. Not too hot, not too sweet, not to weak, not too strong, not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer. A most amazing cove, Jeeves. So dashed competent in every respect.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

368. “You can’t press your suit and another fellow’s trousers simultaneously.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

369. “There’s a sort of wooly headed duckiness about you. If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could really marry you Bertie.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

370. “The club book was never intended to be light and titillated reading for the members. Its function is solely to acquaint those who are contemplating taking new posts with the foibles of prospective employers. This being so, there is no need for the record contained in the eighteen pages in which you figure. For I may hope, may I not, sir, that you will allow me to remain permanently in your service?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

371. “What ho!′ I said. ‘What ho!’ said Motty. ‘What ho! What ho!’ ‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’ After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

372. “The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

373. “My earnest hope is that the entire remainder of my existence will be one round of unruffled monotony.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

374. “New York is an egotist. It will suffer no divided attention. “Look at me!” says the voice of the city imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

375. “Few things are so pleasant as the anticipation of them...”

— P. G. Wodehouse

376. “Yes, sir. The mathematician Archimedes is related to have discovered the principle of displacement quite suddenly one morning, while in his bath.’ ‘Well, there you are. And I don’t suppose he was such a devil of a chap. Compared with you, I mean.’ ‘A gifted man, I believe, sir. It has been a matter of general regret that he was subsequently killed by a common soldier.’ ‘Too bad. Still, all flesh is as grass, what?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

377. “Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

378. “The true philosopher is a man who says “All right,” and goes to sleep in his armchair.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

379. “Until tonight I saw him only through the golden mist of love, and thought him the perfect man. This evening he revealed himself as what he really is – a satyr.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

380. “Blandings Castle is not for the weak.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

381. “The train began to give up its contents, now in ones and twos, now in a steady stream.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

382. “A drawback to success in life is that failure, when it does come, acquires an exaggerated importance.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

383. “It is madness to come to country houses without one’s bottle of Mickey Finns.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

384. “This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

385. “When I have a leisure moment, you will generally find me curled up with Spinoza’s latest.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

386. “Mere abuse is no criticism.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

387. “I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and stammering. He acts. I.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

388. “Don’t forget that in pushing policemen into duck ponds the follow through is everything.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

389. “I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

390. “Let us say, then, that at some point – five, ten, fifteen, or it may have been twenty minutes later – I became aware of somebody coughing softly at my side like a respectful sheep trying to attract the attention of its shepherd, and with how can I describe what thankfulness and astonishment I perceived Jeeves.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

391. “I’m bound to say that New York’s a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I’m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

392. “It is not mere technical skill that makes a man a golfer, it is the golfing soul.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

393. “And then, just when I was beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

394. “I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

395. “Golf is the Great Mystery.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

396. “The last few minutes of waiting in a cupboard are always the hardest.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

397. “I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare – or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad – who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

398. “As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

399. “I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

400. “What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent?”

— P. G. Wodehouse