"The voice of Love seemed to call me, but it was a wrong number."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Very Good, Jeeves!)

"There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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

"She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". "
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I always advise people never to give advice."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves)

"If he had a mind, there was something on it."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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

"...it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Summer Moonshine)

"I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof. "
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.

"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"

"I have not yet breakfasted."

"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?"

"No, thank you."

She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage league or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of silence."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much."
— P.G. Wodehouse (The Inimitable Jeeves)

"There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"'Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Is it really a frost?'
'A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.'
'But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.'
'Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.'
'He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.'
'I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.'"
— P.G. Wodehouse

"What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?"
— P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves)

"I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests!"
— P.G. Wodehouse (The Inimitable Jeeves)

"Cheer up, Crips, and keep smiling. That’s the thing to do. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say ‘What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?’ Make you a lot of new friends."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Doctor Sally)

"As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest of suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Right Ho, Jeeves)

"Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves)

"Providence looks after all the chumps of this world, and personally, I'm all for it."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Great pals we've always been. In fact there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Employers are like horses—they require management."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves)

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Well, you certainly are the most wonderfully wooly baa lamb that ever stepped."
— P.G. Wodehouse (The Code of the Woosters)

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"What I'm worrying about is what Tom is going to say when he starts talking."

"Uncle Tom?"

"I wish there was something else you could call him except 'Uncle Tom,' " Aunt Dahlia said a little testily. "Every time you do it, I expect to see him turn black and start playing the banjo."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist."
— P.G. Wodehouse (The Most Of P.G. Wodehouse)

"Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit."

"Thank you miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction."
— P.G. Wodehouse (The Code of the Woosters)

"I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"To find a man's true character, play golf with him. "
— P.G. Wodehouse

"It's and odd thing, but however much an oficionado one may be of mysteries in book form, when they pop up in real life they seldom fail to give one the pip."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting. "
— P.G. Wodehouse

"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."
— P.G. Wodehouse