(Based on image of the Wodehouse wax figure at Dulwich College)

Wodehouse quotes (1)

Try our Quotes-generator for smartphones - link top right,
and see also: Wodehouse quotes (2) and Quotes about Wodehouse

"I gave it up. The man annoyed me. I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning
massacres for the bourgeoisie, but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn't do it
with a bright and cheerful smile."

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Plums

"The least thing upset him on the golf links. He missed short putts because of
the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows."

The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922)

"He bleated like the sheep he so closely resembled."

Barmy in Wonderland (1952)

"Across the pale parabola of joy ..."

Leave it to Psmith (1923/1924)
(from "Songs of Squalor" by the poet Ralston McTodd)

"Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer
as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad."

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"The question of their morals, said Mrs Chavender, does not arise.
They may, as you say, be the best people in London, though that isn't saying much.
My point is that they sell inferior ham."

Quick Service (1940)

"His face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato.
I could see he loved like a thousand bricks."

Joy in the Morning (1946/1947)

"Breakfast had been prepared by the kitchen maid, an indifferent performer who had used
the scorched earth policy on the bacon again."

Spring Fever (1948)

"I don't suppopse she would recognize a deep, beatiful thought
if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartar sauce."

The Code of The Woosters (1938)

"Jeeves, I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself
to the attention of the parent sheep..."

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"From start to finish of every meal she soliloquized.
Shakespeare would have liked her."

The Mating Season (1949)

"Editors were collecting the views of celebrities, preferably of those whose opinion on the subject
was absolutely valueless."

The Swoop (1909)

"You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you.
I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords
and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower"

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"On the cue 'five aunts' I had given at the knees a trifle, for the thougth of being confronted with
such a solid gaggle of aunts, even if those of another, was an unnerving one.
Reminding myself that in this life it is not aunts that matter, but the courage that one brings to them,
I pulled myself together."

The Mating Season (1949)

"By Jove, you are wet! said Ronnie.
It hurt him to think that this brave new world could contain a fellow human being
in such a soluble condition."

Heavy Weather (1933)

"Here was the terrace, bathed in moonlight, and here was she, bathed in moonlight, too,
but here in addition, he now saw, was his brother Galahad, also bathed in moonlight,
and the sight brought a quick 'Oh, ah' to his lips."

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

"Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them."

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

"There was an infinite sadness in Monty Bodkin's gaze.
He looked like a male Mona Lisa."

Heavy Weather (1933)

"The shock to Colonel Wedge of finding that what he had taken
for a pile of old clothes was alive and a relation by marriage
caused him to speak a little sharply."

Full Moon (1947)

"Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of
three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all,
the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye
on its younger sons."

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935)

"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."

Carry on Jeeves (1925/1927) (The Aunt and the Sluggard)

"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a Chrysanthemum."

probably a misquote of:
"And go and get your hair cut, screamed Beatrice.
You look like a chrysanthemum."

Hot Water (1932)

"To dive under the bed was with Sacheverell Mulliner the work of a moment.
And there, as the door opened, he lay, holding his breath and trying to keep his ears
from rustling in the draught."

Mulliner Nights - The Voice from the Past - (1933)

"I didn't like his collar, and Jeeves would have had a thing or two to say about
the sit of his trousers; but, nevertheless, he was authoritative."

Very Good, Jeeves - The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy - (1930)

"He withdrew, leaving a gap in the atmosphere about ten feet by six."

Very Good, Jeeves - The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy - (1930)

"... but there was no play of expression on his finely chiselled to indicate it.
There very seldom is on Jeeves's f-c. In moments of discomfort, as I had told Tuppy,
he wears a mask, preserving throughout the quiet stolidity of a stuffed moose."

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"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."

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

"His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed, and his Adam’s apple hopped about like one of those
india-rubber balls on the top of the fountain in a shooting gallery."

The inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"Anything in the papers?"
"Some slight friction threatening in the Balkans, sir. Otherwise, nothing."

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"You have the manner of one whose only friend on earth is a yellow dog, and who has lost the dog."
(Psmith to Mike in) Psmith in the City (1910)

"It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes - the kind that makes you reach up
to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as I were some sort of unnecessary product
which Cuthbert the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans."

The Adventures of Sally (1922)

"Mere abuse is not criticism"

Quick Service (1940)

"She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen
in one of his less frivolous moments."

Summer Lightning (1929)

"Left alone, Lord Emsworth sat for a while savouring that delicious sense of peace
which comes to men of quiet tastes when their womenfolk have had their say and departed."

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

"As a sleuth you are poor.
You couldn’t detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth"

The Man with Two Left Feet (1917)

"Are wives often like that? Welcoming criticism of the lord and master, I mean? "
"They are generally open to suggestions from the outside public with regard to
improvements of their husbands, sir."

Very Good Jeeves (1930) - (Jeeves and the Old School Chum)

"He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air
and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way
and assemble the parts again just where they want them."

Leave it to Jeeves (1923/1924)

"He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue.
He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his interior by
some up-to-date process of mining."

The Clicking of Cutberth (1922)

"In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now
was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake."

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"...as I felt my way along the wall I collided with what turned out to be a grandfather clock,
for the existence of which I had not budgeted, and it toppled over with a sound like the delivery
of several tons of coal through the roof of a conservatory.
Glass crashed, pulleys and things parted from their moorings, and as I stood trying to separate my heart
from the front teeth in which it had become entangled, the lights flashed on and I beheld Sir Watkyn Bassett."

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

"It was at this point that I jerked the spoon and sent six of the best and crispest sailing on
to the sideboard, with Spenser gamboling after them like a dignified old retriever."

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's,
cast up on some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and tides."

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who,
picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back"

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"The Ancient Mariner stopped a wedding guest on his way to a wedding;
George Mackintosh gave me the impression that he could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express
on its way to Penzance"

The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922)

"... like a man who, stooping to pluck a nosegay of wild flowers on a railway line,
is unexpectedly struck in the small of the back by the Cornish Express."

Joy (Jeeves) in the morning (1946/1947)

"The struggle between Prater’s cat and Prater’s cat’s conscience was short,
and ended in the hollowest of victories for the former.
The conscience really had no sort of chance from the beginning."

The Tabby Terror (1902) + Tales of St Austin's (1903)

"Yes, sir, said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend."

Carry On, Jeeves (1924)

"I can remember the days, said the Gin-and-Ginger-Ale, when every other girl you met
stood about six feet two in her dancing-shoes, and had as many curves as a Scenic Railway.
Now they are all five foot nothing and you can't see them sideways. Why is this?"

Mr. Mulliner Speaking (1929/1930)

"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 talk French."

The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

"Alf Todd, said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery,
has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room
trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat’s ear with a red-hot needle."

Ukridge (1924)

"I'd always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn't even put her in the oven"

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

"To my daughter Leonora without whose never failing sympathy and encouragement
this book would have been completed in half the time."

Dedication in Heart of a Goof (1926)

"His manner had the offensive jauntiness of the man who has had a cold bath
when he might just as easily have had a hot one."

The Girl on the Boat (1922)

"Why? Be reasonable, Bertie. If you were your aunt, and you knew the short of chap you were,
would you let a fellow you knew to be your best pal tutor your son?"

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

"A youth and middle age spent on the London Stock Exchange had left Lester Carmody
singularly broad-minded.
He had to a remarkable degree that spacious charity which allows a man
to look indulgently on any financial project, however fishy, provided he can see a bit in it for himself."

Money for nothing (1928)

"Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were
in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict scottish sect and you were a parishioner
of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls."

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

".. but I have always been a suburbanite at heart, and it is when I get a plot
calling for a suburban setting that I really roll up my sleeves and give of my best."

about himself - preface to "Sam the Sudden" (1974)

"... What asses these Frenchmen are! Why can't they talk English?"
"They are possibly more to be pitied than censured, m'lord. Early upbringing no doubt has a good deal to do with it."

Ring for Jeeves (1953)

"One uses the word 'descend' advisedly, for what is required is some word suggesting
instantaneous activity. About Baxter's progress from the second floor to the first floor,
there was nothing halting or hesitating.
He took the entire staircase in one majestic sweep. There were eleven stairs in all,
and the only ones he hit, were the third and the tenth."

Leave it to Psmith (1923/1924)

"She always seems to me to be in a perpetual state of being about to desire the butler
to instruct the head footman to serve lunch in the blue-room overlooking the west terrace.
She exudes dignity."

Extricating Young Gussie - 1915

"For some moments his rigidity was so pronounced that he might have been mistaken
for a statue of himself erected by a few friends and admirers."

The Girl in Blue - 1970

"Listen, Nobby," I said.
"She didn’t, of course. I’ve never met a girl yet who did.
Say ‘Listen’ to any member of the delicately nurtured sex,
and she takes it as a cue to start talking herself."

Thank you, Jeeves - 1934

"Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm,
except possibly as a taster."

The Custody of the Pumpkin - 1924

An idea struck him. He called up Agnes Flack.
"Miss Flack?"
"Hello?"
"Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but will you marry me?"
"Certainly. Who is that?" ....

Tangled Hearts / Nothing Serious - 1950

"Even at normal times Aunt Dahlia's map tended a little towards the crushed strawberry.
But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now.
She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression"

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"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."

The Man Upstairs (1917/1933)

He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook
when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

''It is the boast of Barribault's Hotel, which caters principally to American millionairs and visiting maharajahs,
that it can make the wrong sort of client feel more like a piece of cheese - and a cheap yellow cheese at that
- than any other similar establishment in the world.
The personnel of its staff are selected primarily for their ability to curl the upper lip and raise the eyebrows
just that extra quarter of an inch which makes all the difference.''

Full Moon (1947)

"You're one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it.
It's a great gift."

The Girl in Blue (1970)

"He gave a snort which nearly upset a vase on the mantelpiece."

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"He looked like a sheep with a secret sorrow."

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

"She had just enough brains to make a jaybird fly crooked"

The Man Upstairs and other Stories (1914)

"What a morning! Warm, fragrant, balmy, yet with just that nip in the air that puts a fellow on his toes.
The yeast of spring is fermenting in my veins, and I am ready for anything."

Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)

"It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya
that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column.
He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

Ring for Jeeves (1953)

"I left the chair like a cork emerging from a bottle under the ministrations of a sinewy butler."

Laughing Gas (1936)

"Five years of assistant-directing had so sapped Montrose's morale that nowadays
he frequently found himself starting up and apologizing in his sleep."

Monkey Business / Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935)

“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.”

My Man Jeeves (1919)

"She went out, breathing flame quietly through her nostrils."

Mulliner Nights (1933)

"There was a sort of low, whistling sound, like an east wind blowing through the crannies of a haunted house.
It was April June drawing in her breath."

Laughing Gas (1936)

"With the brains of a peahen, and one whose mental growth had been retarded
by being dropped on its head when just out of the egg"

Full Moon (1947)

"I remained motionless, like a ventriloquist's dummy whose ventriloquist has gone off to the local
and left it sitting."

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

The Custody of a Pumpkin / Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935)

"The fourth hole found him four down, and one had the feling that he was lucky not to be five."

Excelsior / Nothing Serious (1950)

"He is stout, this Parsloe?”
"He certainly gets his pennyworth out of a weighing machine."

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

"His knotted and combined locks parted, each particular hair standing on end
like quills upon the fretful porcupine: his heart broke from its moorings
and crashed with a dull thud against his front teeth:
and with a wordless cry he shot toward the ceiling."

Uncle Dynamite (1948)

"Sunshine, calling to all right-thinking men to come out and revel in its heartening warmth,
poured in at the windows of the great library of Blandings Castle."

Summer Lightning (1929)

"At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock,
as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth,
that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain."

"The door opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one."

"My son Frederick," said Lord Emsworth, rather in the voice with which he would have called attention
to the presence of a slug among his flowers."

"A depressing musty scent pervaded the place,
as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances. "

Leave it to Psmith (1923)

"Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump.
Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate.
All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains.
What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him."

The Adventures of Sally (1922)

"He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round waiting for him to come out,
and would give perfectly good strollers the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him."

Helping Freddie / My Man Jeeves (1911)

"The refined moon which served Blandings Castle and district was nearly at it's full,
and the ancestral home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, had for some hours now
been flooded by its silver rays."

Full Moon (1947)

"The latter's habit of behaving like a Swiss mountain echo ...."

Full Moon (1947)

"In a slow, pleasent voice, like clotted cream made audible, she said:
"Hullo, Dad-dee."

Full Moon (1947)

"I gave it up. The man annoyed me. I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning
massacres for the bourgeoisie, but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn't do it with
a bright and cheerful smile."

Thank You, Jeeves (1934)

“A certain critic - for such men, I regret to say, do exist - made the nasty remark about my last novel
that it contained "all the old Wodehouse characters under different names."
He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha:
but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning.
With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse
characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.”

Introduction to Summer Lightning (1929)

"He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women,
and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect"

Piccadilly Jim (1918)

"Muriel (the persian cat) had left the room in the wake of the breakfast tray, being anxious
to be present at the obsequies of a fried sole which had formed Lady Ann's simple meal ..."

Something Fresh (1915)

"Uncle Tom, who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow"

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

"His face drawn, his pince-nez askew, his tie drooping away from its stud like a languorous lily,
he sat staring sightlessly before him. He looked like something that had just been prepared for stuffing
by a taxidermist."

Summer Lightning (1929)

"He’s absent-minded, isn't he?"
"Yes, I think one could fairly call him that. If he has a mind, it is very seldom there"

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

"Slowly, fading off across hill and dale, the vast bellow died away.
And suddenly, as it died, another, softer sound succeeded it.
A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men
drinking soup in a foreign restaurant. And, as he heard it, Lord Emsworth uttered a cry of rapture.
The Empress was feeding."

Blandings Castle (1935)

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"For Mr. Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man; no "aboriginal calamity." His characters have never
tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden
from which we are all exiled.
... Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity
that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in."

Evelyn Waugh (1961)

And that is the spirit in which the content of this page aspires to be presented.

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