Something Fresh (Blandings Castle, #1)

by P.G. Wodehouse

The first time he appeared in Arundell Street in his sweater and flannels he had barely whirled his Indian clubs once around his head before he had attracted the following audience: a) Two cabmen—one intoxicated; b) Four waiters from the Hotel Mathis; c) Six waiters from the Hotel Previtali; d) Six chambermaids from the Hotel Mathis; e) Five chambermaids from the Hotel Previtali; f) The proprietor of the Hotel Mathis; g) The proprietor of the Hotel Previtali; h) A street cleaner; i) Eleven nondescript loafers; j) Twenty-seven children; k) A cat. They all laughed—even the cat—and kept on laughing.

It was with the sullen repulsion of a vegetarian who finds a caterpillar in his salad that he now sat glaring at them.

Comes in Death at the Excelsior as well.

If he had told Mrs. Ball once that he was never to be disturbed in the morning on any pretext whatsoever, he had told her twenty times.

80 years later in a film called Baasha...

"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you." "No, no!" said Ashe. "Oh, no; not at all—not at all! No. Oh, no—not at all—no!" And would have continued to play on the theme indefinitely had not the girl spoken again.

Mr. Beach was too well-bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows were not. "Ah!" he said. "?" cried his eyebrows. "?—?—?" Ashe ignored the eyebrows.

Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth's indefatigable private secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings.

One of the King Georges of England—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. Baxter agreed with him.

Coming down to first causes, the only reason why collisions of any kind occur is because two bodies defy Nature's law that a given spot on a given plane shall at a given moment of time be occupied by only one body.