Louise Culmer > Louise's Quotes

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith

“Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“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.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

“In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay at.  The heroine of a modern novel is always “divinely tall,” and she is ever “drawing herself up to her full height.”  At the “Barley Mow” she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.

I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.

That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession—conscientious, respectable tow-lines—tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves. I say there may be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“The case was becoming serious. It was now past midnight. The hotels at Shiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round, knocking up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know if they let apartments! George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house. But then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back and refuses to lock us up!"

We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen. Besides, we did not want to overdo the thing and get six months.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.”
― Will Cuppy

“Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. ”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he’d let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

“Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

“Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

“Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

“Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.”
― Stella Gibbons

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“My mother, for instance, thought-or rather, knew-that it was dangerous to drive an automobile without gasoline: it fried the valves, or something. 'Now don't you dare drive all over town without gasoline!' she would say to us when we started off" (31).”
― James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times

“Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.”
― James Thurber

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
― Robert Benchley

“After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.”
― Robert Benchley

“Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.”
― Robert Benchley

“One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.”
― J.B. Morton