The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.
Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.
He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.
He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'””The mood will pass, sir.
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
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.
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.
A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle.
If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.
Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, “So, you’re back from Moscow, eh?
There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.
In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.
As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
What’s the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don’t yield to them?
Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.
It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
A man’s subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
The true philosopher is a man who says “All right,” and goes to sleep in his armchair.
[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start.”, Issue 64, Winter 1975)
She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.
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.
[T]he success of every novel — if it’s a novel of action — depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, “What are my big scenes?” and then get every drop of juice out of them.”, Issue 64, Winter 1975)
I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.
The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.
When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.
-‘What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?’There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter
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.
He’s such a dear, Mr. Garnet. A beautiful, pure, bred Persian. He has taken prizes.””He’s always taking something – generally food.
One of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am unable at the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the time being has slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old situation.
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.
There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
I mean, if you’re asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it’s absurd to tack a ‘sir’ on to every sentence. The two things don’t go together.
Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice.
Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.
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.
Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.
Oh, is that my report, father?’ said Mike, with a sort of sickly interest, much as a dog about to be washed might evince in his
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.
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.
Suiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?”Oh, rather!”What do you do about it?”I generally take a couple of cocktails.
And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.
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.
Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.
The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.
There is no pathos more bitter than that of parting from someone we have never met.
…with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.
Squiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?”Oh, rather!”What do you do about it?”I generally take a couple of cocktails.
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.
Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators.
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.
Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-like-to-be-left-alone-to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts
I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.
Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
The ideal adventurer needs… the quality of not being content to mind his own affairs…
It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.
[T]he success of every novel — if it’s a novel of action — depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, “What are my big scenes?” and then get every drop of juice out of
One of the Georges – I forget which – once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep each night – I cannot recall at the moment how many – made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.
If you don’t want me to attend the patient I’ll go.”But she can’t see a doctor now.”Why not?”She isn’t well.
Morning, Bill,’ said Lord Tidmouth agreeably.’Go to hell!’ said Bill.’Right-ho,’ said his lordship.
I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.
This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money.
…writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses.
Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
Had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.
I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean.
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.
Captain Bradbury’s right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery.
The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons.
You can’t go by what a girl says, when she’s giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It’s like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn’t mean anything.
As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.
Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope…””Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves.””No, sir.””There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn’t.””Very true, sir.
Employers are like horses — they require management.
Girls do go for the finely-chiselled. And apart from his looks, he’s and artist, and there’s something about artists that seems to act on the other sex like catnip on cats.
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.
The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.
It was my Uncle George who discovered alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
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.
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.
…there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:”He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.
The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it.
Why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.
I had one of those ideas I do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class.
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.
Come on,” he said. “Bring the poker.”I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it.
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.