P.G. Wodehouse

What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?

It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.

No sir," said Mr Molloy. "I'm mighty sorry I can't meet you in any way, but the fact is I'm all fixed up in Oil. Oil's my dish. I began in Oil and I'll end up in Oil. I wouldn't be happy outside of Oil.""Oh?" said Mr Carmody, regarding this Human Sardine with as little open hostility as he could manage on the spur of the moment.

Oh, is that my report, father?' said Mike, with a sort of sickly interest, much as a dog about to be washed might evince in his

Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.

Lady Constance's lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother's head.

You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)

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

Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence.'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?''Yes. I wrote "Cocktail Time"''You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?'Cosmo said he had no wife.'Surely?'"I'm a bachelor.'Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,' murmured Mr Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. 'I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?''No.''Sleep does. It knits the ravelled sleave of care.'(After a period of engrossed knitting, Cosmo coughs loudly to draw attention to his presence.)'Goodness, you made me jump!' he (Saxby) said. 'Who are you?''My name, as I have already told you, is Wisdom''How did you get in?' asked Mr Saxby with a show of interest.'I was shown in.''And stayed in. I see, Tennyson was right. Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. Take a chair.''I have.''Take another,' said Mr Saxby hospitably.

Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.

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.

Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice.

You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

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?

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.

Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.