The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories Quotes

“It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Musical comedy is the Irish stew of drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.”
― P. G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet And Other Stories

“A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Mother always used to say, 'If you want to succeed in life, please the women. They are the real bosses. The men don't count.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“You go away and have a nice cup of hot tea,' said the agent, soothingly, 'and you'll be as right as anything in the morning.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Sex attraction is so purely a question of the taste of the individual that the wise man never argues about it. He accepts its vagaries as part of the human mystery, and leaves it at that.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“They walked on in silence. Katie's heart was beating with a rapidity that forbade speech. Nothing like this very direct young man had ever happened to her before. She had grown so accustomed to regarding herself as something too insignificant and unattractive for the notice of the lordly male that she was overwhelmed. She had a vague feeling that there was a mistake somewhere. It surely could not be she who was proving so alluring to this fairy prince. The novelty of the situation frightened her.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“It would seem to be an inexorable law of Nature that no man shall shine at both ends. If he has a high forehead and a thirst for wisdom, his fox-trotting (if any) shall be as the staggerings of the drunken; while, if he is a good dancer, he is nearly always petrified from the ears upward.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford's International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand,”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“It sometimes seems to me that in this life we've all got to have trouble sooner or later, and some of us gets it bit by bit, spread out thin, so to speak, and a few of us gets it in a lump—biff!”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“He had never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about bloodstains would have filled a library.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“She threw in the last suggestion entirely in a sporting spirit. She loved battle, and she had a feeling that this one was going to finish far too quickly. To prolong it, she gave him this opening. There were a dozen ways in which he might answer, each more insulting than the last; and then, when he had finished, she could begin again. These little encounters, she held, sharpened the wits, stimulated the circulation, and kept one out in the open air.
- The Romance of an Ugly Policeman”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Jack: “We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia.”
Mary: “Isch!”
“There! You’re sneezing already.”
“I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust.”
“It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you’ve every reason to sneeze; but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine.”
“I’m disgusted with you—with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying——”
“Saying——?”
She was silent.
“What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can’t get away from that, and it’s good enough for me.”
“Well, it’s not true any longer.”
“Yes, it is,” said Wilton, comfortably, “bless it.”
“It is not. I’m going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again.”
She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.
“There’s a jelly-fish just where you’re going to sit,” said Wilton.
“I don’t care.”
“It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often.”
“I’m not amused.”
“Have patience. I can be funnier than that.” - Wilton's Holiday”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“but the unsensational doings of a quite commonplace young”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford's International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did not require”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Most of the Marois Bay scenery is simply made as a setting for the nursing of a wounded heart. The cliffs are a sombre indigo, sinister and forbidding; and even on the finest days the sea has a curious sullen look. You have only to get away from the crowd near the bathing-machines and reach one of these small coves and get your book against a rock and your pipe well alight, and you can simply wallow in misery. I have done it myself.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“He was really only a sort of detective, a species”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“No burglar wastes his time burgling authors.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Mary, in these days, simply couldn't see that he was on the earth. She looked round him, above him, and through him, but never at him;”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Henry lived in a boarding-house in Guildford Street.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories

“I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford's International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand,”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“restaurant in the rain, and note what time someone”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“Here, you! The boss wants you. Buck up!' Mr Stafford was talking into the telephone. He replaced the receiver as
Henry entered.
'Oh, Rice, here's a woman wants her husband shadowed while he's on the road. He's an actor. I'm sending you. Go to this address, and get photographs and all particulars. You'll have to catch the eleven o'clock train on Friday.' 'Yes, sir.' 'He's in "The Girl”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“He proposed to Alice Weston. She refused him. 'It's not because I'm not fond of you. I think you're the nicest man I ever met.' A good deal of assiduous attention had enabled Henry to win this place in her affections. He had worked patiently and well before actually putting his fortune to the test. 'I'd marry you tomorrow if things were different. But I'm on the stage, and I mean to stick there. Most of the girls want to get off it, but not me. And one thing I'll never do is marry someone who isn't in the profession. My sister Genevieve did, and look what happened to her. She married a commercial traveller, and take it from me he travelled.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

“It was not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but ‘twas enough—it served. Stubbing it squarely with his toe, Henry shot forward, all arms and legs. It”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet

“A detective is only human. The less of a detective, the more human he is. Henry was not much of a detective, and his human”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories