110+ P. G. Wodehouse Quotes On Writing, Humorous And Witty

P. G. Wodehouse was an English comic writer who created some of the most beloved characters in literature, including Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. He wrote over ninety books and hundreds of short stories, mainly set in the world of upper-class Edwardian England. His work is known for its humour, wit and light-hearted satire of British aristocracy. Following is our collection on famous quotes by P. G. Wodehouse on life, writing, love.

Top 10 P. G. Wodehouse Quotes

1. Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
2. There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
3. It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
4. There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
5. An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away.
6. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
7. The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
8. I always advise people never to give advice.
9. Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
10. As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.

P. G. Wodehouse Image Quotes

An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

P. G. Wodehouse Short Quotes

• Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
• There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'" "The mood will pass, sir.
• I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
• What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
• Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?
• Golf, like measles, should be caught young.
• If men's minds were like dominoes, surely his would be the double blank.
• The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority.
• I pity the shrimp that matches wits with you Jeeves
• He groaned slightly and winced like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch.

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Life

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

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

As a child of eight Mr. Trout had once kissed a girl of six under the mistletoe at a Christmas party, but there his sex life had come to abrupt halt. — 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

That is life. Just one long succession of misunderstandings and rash acts and what not. Absolutely. — P. G. Wodehouse

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious. — P. G. Wodehouse

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. — 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

Chumps always make the best husbands. All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Writing

Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing. — 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

I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn. — P. G. Wodehouse

Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did. — P. G. Wodehouse

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels. — P. G. Wodehouse

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. — P. G. Wodehouse

...there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation. — P. G. Wodehouse

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write. — P. G. Wodehouse

I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing. — P. G. Wodehouse

I should think it extremely improbable that anyone ever wrote for money. Naturally, when he has written something, he wants to get as much for it as he can, but that is a very different thing from writing for money. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Love

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

My motto is 'Love and let love' - with the one stipulation that people who love in glass-houses should breathe on the windows. — P. G. Wodehouse

Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love. — P. G. Wodehouse

When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff. — P. G. Wodehouse

Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse. — P. G. Wodehouse

A golfer needs a loving wife to whom he can describe the day's play through the long evening. — P. G. Wodehouse

When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon. — P. G. Wodehouse

His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see he loved like a thousand bricks. — P. G. Wodehouse

What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent? — P. G. Wodehouse

It's curious how, when you're in love, you yearn to go about doing acts of kindness to everybody. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Humorous

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. — P. G. Wodehouse

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. — P. G. Wodehouse

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them. — P. G. Wodehouse

Comedy is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous. — P. G. Wodehouse

The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg. — P. G. Wodehouse

He was a long, stripy policeman, who flowed out of his uniform at odd spots, as if Nature, setting out to make a constable, had had a good deal of material left over which she had not liked to throw away but hardly seemed able to fit into the general scheme. — P. G. Wodehouse

It looked something like a pen wiper and something like a piece of hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekinese puppy. — P. G. Wodehouse

She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice cream. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Sort

Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty. — P. G. Wodehouse

There's a sort of wooly headed duckiness about you. If I wasn't so crazy about Marmaduke, I could really marry you Bertie. — P. G. Wodehouse

I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts or feelings. — P. G. Wodehouse

Now, I'm a mixer. I can't help it. It's my nature. I like men. I like the taste of their boots, the smell of their legs, and the sound of their voices. It may be weak of me, but a man has only to speak to me, and a sort of thrill goes down my spine and sets my tail wagging. — P. G. Wodehouse

She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. — P. G. Wodehouse

It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for? — P. G. Wodehouse

Just another proof, of course, of what I often say - it takes all sorts to make a world. — P. G. Wodehouse

She's a sort of human vampire-bat — P. G. Wodehouse

I don't know if you know it, J.B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Rule

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. — P. G. Wodehouse

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed. — P. G. Wodehouse

As a rule, from what I've observed, the American Captain of Industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a Captain of Industry again. — P. G. Wodehouse

Some time ago," he said, "--how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life. — P. G. Wodehouse

I attribute my whole success in life to a rigid observance of the fundamental rule - Never have yourself tattooed with any woman's name, not even her initials. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes About Looked

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments. — P. G. Wodehouse

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape. — P. G. Wodehouse

He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner-gong due any moment. — P. G. Wodehouse

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. — P. G. Wodehouse

So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life. — P. G. Wodehouse

Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

There was the man who seemed to be attempting to decieve his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard. — P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse Famous Quotes And Sayings

An apple a day, if well aimed, keeps the doctor away. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies. — 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

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. — P. G. Wodehouse

If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn't shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race. — P. G. Wodehouse

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo. — P. G. Wodehouse

Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh? — P. G. Wodehouse

I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover-the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all. — P. G. Wodehouse

Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share. — P. G. Wodehouse

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine. — P. G. Wodehouse

She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper. — P. G. Wodehouse

This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth. — 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

The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. — P. G. Wodehouse

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good. — P. G. Wodehouse

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. — P. G. Wodehouse

Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character. — P. G. Wodehouse

Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto. — P. G. Wodehouse

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash. — P. G. Wodehouse

To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying. — P. G. Wodehouse

Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start. — P. G. Wodehouse

She had more curves than a scenic railway — P. G. Wodehouse

Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat. — 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

However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck. — P. G. Wodehouse

[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments. — P. G. Wodehouse

Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us. — P. G. Wodehouse

A lesser moustache, under the impact of that quick, agonised expulsion of breath, would have worked loose at the roots. — P. G. Wodehouse

Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. — P. G. Wodehouse

[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions. — P. G. Wodehouse

It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore! The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky. — P. G. Wodehouse

It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins. — P. G. Wodehouse

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini. — P. G. Wodehouse

Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it. — P. G. Wodehouse

Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on? — P. G. Wodehouse

"After all, golf is only a game", said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they are saying. — P. G. Wodehouse

Well, you know what the Fulham Road's like. If your top-hat blows off into it, it has about as much chance as a rabbit at a dogshow. — P. G. Wodehouse

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

I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis. — P. G. Wodehouse

The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact. — P. G. Wodehouse

I wouldn't have a face like that,' proceeded the child, with a good deal of earnestness, 'not if you gave me a million dollars.' He thought for a moment, then corrected himself. 'Two million dollars!' he added. — P. G. Wodehouse

He enjoys that perfect peace, that peace beyond all understanding, which comes to its maximum only to the man who has given up golf. — P. G. Wodehouse

I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves. — P. G. Wodehouse

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks. — P. G. Wodehouse

I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet? — P. G. Wodehouse

Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. — P. G. Wodehouse

The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed. — P. G. Wodehouse

I wonder what Tommy Morris would have had to say to all this number 6-iron, number 12-iron, number 28-iron stuff. He probably wouldn't have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling. — P. G. Wodehouse

...what I feel we ought to do at this juncture is to dash off somewhere where it's quiet and there aren't so many housesdancing the 'Blue Danube' and shove some tea into ourselves. And over the pot and muffins I shall have something veryimportant to say to you. — P. G. Wodehouse

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink. — P. G. Wodehouse

I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together. — P. G. Wodehouse

The spine, and I do not attempt to conceal the fact, had become soluble, in the last degree. — P. G. Wodehouse

Life Lessons by P. G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse's works are full of wit and humour, and often feature characters who are able to find humour in difficult situations. His works emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive outlook, even in the face of adversity. His stories also remind us that it's important to remain true to ourselves and our values, no matter what life throws at us.