Top 500 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “It is the saddest spectacle in the world, that of the crowd collected by a ‘Wanted’ advertisement. They are so palpably not wanted by any one for any purpose whatsoever; yet every time they gather together with a sort of hopeful hopelessness.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

403. “I’m dashed if I know what’s going to happen to me. I am the thingummy of what’s-its-name.” “You look it,” said Mike.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

404. “Love is a fever which, so to speak, drives off without wasting time on the address.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

405. “Between camaraderie and love there is a broad gulf.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

406. “Comedy is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

407. “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

408. “Those haughty English aristocrats are like that. Tough babies. Comes of treading the peasantry underfoot with an iron heel, I guess.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

409. “Her lips were tightly glued together, her chin protruding, her whole layout that of a girl who intended to stand no rannygazoo.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

410. “There, my boy,” he said. “It’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Windlebird.” “My dear boy, don’t mention it. If you’re satisfied, I’m sure I am.” Mr. Windlebird always spoke the truth when he could. He spoke it now.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

411. “Do you realize a fraction of the awful things you have let me in for? How on earth am I to remember whether I go in before the chef or after the footman? I shan’t have a peaceful minute while I’m in this place.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

412. “New York is a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up just as the rest is going to bed.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

413. “NOW, touching this business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

414. “You don’t get any five shillings out of me.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ He sat silent for a space. ‘Things happen to guys that don’t kick in their protection money,’ he said dreamily.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

415. “Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay the night.” I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If you do, he always decides to stay the night.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

416. “And of all the objects under my immediate advisement I noted this yacht with the most pleasure and approval. White in colour, in size resembling a young liner, it lent a decided tone to the Chuffnell Regis foreshore.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

417. “He was always in a sort of fever because he was dropping behind schedule with his daily acts of kindness. However hard he tried, he’d fall behind; and then you would find him prowling about the house, setting such a clip to try and catch up with himself that Easeby was rapidly becoming a perfect hell for man and beast.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

418. “Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is a man of sudden, strong enthusiasms and that, when in the grip of one of these, he becomes a remorseless machine – tense, absorbed, single-minded.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

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

— P. G. Wodehouse

420. “He was an unpleasant youth, snub-nosed and spotty. Still, he could balance himself with one hand on an inverted ginger-ale bottle while revolving a barrel on the soles of his feet. There is good in all of us.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

421. “When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

422. “It was a morning when all nature shouted “Fore!” The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip-shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky; and the sun, peeping above the trees, looked like a giant golf-ball perfectly lofted by the mashie of some unseen god and about to drop dead by the pin of the eighteenth.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

423. “All his life he had had a horror of definite appointments. An invitation to tea a week ahead had been enough to poison life for him. He was one of those young men whose souls revolt at the thought of planning out any definite step. He could do things on the spur of the moment, but plans made him lose his nerve.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

424. “She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

425. “A golfer needs a loving wife to whom he can describe the day’s play through the long evening.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

426. “Bayliss resumed reading. He was one of those readers who, whether their subject be a murder case or funny anecdote, adopt a measured and sepulchral delivery which gives a suggestion of tragedy and horror to whatever they read. At the church he attended, children would turn pale and snuggle up to their mothers when he read.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

427. “In the past she had been compelled to describe this man as a hunk of cheese and to express the opinion that his crookedness was such as to enable him to hide at will behind a spiral staircase; but now, in the joy of this unexpected reunion, all these harsh views were forgotten.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

428. “Nothing upsets a fowl more than having to wait for dinner.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

429. “She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

430. “You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I’ve just become a socialist. It’s a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

431. “It’s a mystery to me how kidnappers ever get caught.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

432. “It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you’re a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

433. “In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’ ‘Do what?’ ‘Not strike lambs.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

434. “I really preferred to walk. I have only just landed in England from New York, and it’s quite a treat to walk on an English country road again.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

435. “Gussie opened his vaudeville career.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

436. “How often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!”

— P. G. Wodehouse

437. “I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn’t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

438. “It’s half the battle to get a line on the adored object’s favourite literature. Mug it up and decant an excerpt and she’s all over you. Next moment Freddie was hareing off for a Collected Works of Tennyson. Relieved, because, girls being ehat they are, it might easily have been Shelley or even Browning.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

439. “Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public’s great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is ‘readable’.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

440. “All things come to him who waits, and among them is that unpleasant sensation of a cold hand upon the portion of the body which lies behind the third waistcoat button.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

441. “You should have seen him. Such a kind smile. He said you would be delighted to help me.’ ‘He did, eh?’ ‘He spoke most highly of you.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. “Mr Wooster, miss,” he said, “is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible, but he has a heart of gold.” He said that as he was lowering me from the side of the boat by a rope, having first made sure that the coast was clear. I couldn’t dive, you see, because of the splash.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

442. “Back horses or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier. But to bet at golf is pure gambling.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

443. “After all, what could be pleasanter than a little literature in the small hours?”

— P. G. Wodehouse

444. “It wavered in style between the formal and the chummy, beginning ‘Dear Madam’, and ending ‘So you see what a spot I’m in, ducky,’ but it did present the facts.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

445. “The effect now was much the same as if I had been listening in to a dramatic sketch on the wireless. I got the voices, but I missed the play of expression. And I’d have given a lot to be able to see it. Not Jeeves’s, of course, because Jeeves never has any.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

446. “Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

447. “Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

448. “There is nothing an author today has to guard himself more carefully against than the Saga Habit. The least slackening of vigilance and the thing has gripped him.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

449. “When Nature makes a chump like dear old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one.”

— P. G. Wodehouse

450. “It was the look which Ajax had in his eyes when he defied the lightning, the look which nervous husbands have when they announce their intention of going round the corner to bowl a few games with the boys. One could not say definitely that Lord Marshmoreton looked pop-eyed. On the other hand, one could not assert truthfully that he did not.”

— P. G. Wodehouse