Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Love is a fever which, so to speak, drives off without wasting time on the address.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

352. “The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

353. “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

354. “I pity the shrimp that matches wits with you Jeeves.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

356. “Watching you at work, I was reminded of the young lady of Natchez, whose clothes were all tatters and patches. In alluding to which, she would say, “Well, Ah itch, and wherever ah itches, Ah scratches.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

357. “Just as you say, sir. There is a letter on the tray, sir.” “By Jove, Jeeves, that was practically poetry. Rhymed, did you notice?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

358. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

359. “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

360. “Cold is the ogre that drives all beautiful things into hiding.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

364. “Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

369. “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

370. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

372. “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

373. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

377. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

382. “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

383. “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

384. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

386. “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

387. “Golf is the Great Mystery.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

390. “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

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

395. “Mere abuse is no criticism.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

396. “The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

397. “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

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

399. “She did not cease to look like a basilisk, but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

400. “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