P.G. Wodehouse

“He sallied forth, having told all those bally lies with the clear, blue, pop-eyed gaze of a young child.”

“How does he look, Jeeves?""Sir?""What does Mr Bassington-Bassington look like?""It is hardly my place, sir, to criticize the facial peculiarities of your friends.”

“My name's Bassington-Bassington, and the jolly old Bassington-Bassingtons - I mean the Bassington-Bassingtons aren't accustomed - "Old Blumenfeld told him in a few brief words pretty much what he thought of the Bassington-Bassingtons and what they weren't accustomed to. ..."You got to work good for my pop!" said the stout child, waggling his head reprovingly at Cyril."I don't want any bally cheek from you!" said Cyril, gurgling a bit."What's that?" barked old Blumenfeld. "Do you understand that this boy is my son?""Yes, I do," said Cyril. "And you both have my sympathy!""You're fired!" bellowed old Blumenfeld, swelling a good bit more. "Get out of my theatre!”

“What would Jeeves do that for?""It struck me as rummy, too."..."I mean to say, it's nothing to Jeeves what sort of a face you have!""No!" said Cyril. He spoke a little coldly, I fancied. I don't know why. "Well, I'll be popping. Toodle-oo!”

“I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons.""England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons.""Tolerably so, sir.""No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?""Presumably not, sir.""And what sort of a specimen is this one?""I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance.""Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?""No, sir. I should not care to venture such liberal odds.”

“What are you giving us?""Cold consomme, a cutlet, and a savoury, sir. With lemon-squash, iced.""Well, I don't see how that can hurt him. Don't go getting carried away by the excitement of the thing and start bringing in coffee.”

“He will lunch with you at your flat tomorrow at one-thirty. Please remember that he drinks no wine, strongly disapproves of smoking, and can only eat the simplest food, owing to an impaired digestion. Do not offer him coffee, for he considers it the root of half the nerve-trouble in the world.""I should think a dog-biscuit and a glass of water would about meet the case, what?""Bertie!""Oh, all right. Merely persiflage.""Now it is precisely that sort of idiotic remark that would be calculated to arouse Sir Roderick's worst suspicions.”

“My late Uncle Henry, you see, was by way of being the blot on the Wooster escutcheon. An extremely decent chappie personally, and one who had always endeared himself to me by tipping me with considerable lavishness when I was at school; but there's no doubt he did at times do rather rummy things, notably keeping eleven pet rabbits in his bedroom; and I suppose a purist might have considered him more or less off his onion. In fact, to be perfectly frank, he wound up his career, happy to the last and completely surrounded by rabbits, in some sort of a home.”

“The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.”

“You know how it is as a rule, when you want to get Chappie A on Spot B at exactly the same moment when Chappie C is on Spot D. There's always a chance of a hitch. Take the case of a general, I mean to say, who's planning out a big movement. He tells one regiment to capture the hill with the windmill on it at the exact moment when another regiment is taking the bridgehead or something down in the valley; and everything gets all messed up. And then, when they're chatting the thing over in camp that night, the colonel of the first regiment says, "Oh, sorry! Did you say the hill with the windmill? I thought you said the one with the flock of sheep." And there you are!”

“He was one of those supercilious striplings who give you the impression that you went to the wrong school and that your clothes don't fit."This is Oswald," said Bingo."What," I replied cordially, "could be sweeter? How are you?""Oh, all right," said the kid."Nice place, this.""Oh, all right," said the kid."Having a good time fishing?""Oh, all right," said the kid.Young Bingo led me off to commune apart."Doesn't jolly old Oswald's incessant flow of prattle make your head ache sometimes?" I asked.Bingo sighed.”

“She said I would find Oswald out in the grounds, and such is a mother's love that she spoke as if that were a bit of a boost for the grounds and an inducement to go there.”

“Sheh walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Another bit of bread and cheese," he said to the lad behind the bar.”

“I worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on!" continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. Fred thompson and one or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the chappie behind the bar, was listening with his ears flapping. But there's no reticence about Bingo. He always reminds me of the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice.”

“I merely called for my hat and stick in a marked manner and legged it. But the memory rankled, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens.”

“Yes, by damn! It's too bad!" cried the whiskered marvel. "You careless old woman! You give my hotel bad names, would you or wasn't it? Tomorrow you leave my hotel, by great Scotland!"... I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.”

“Never mind," I said crisply. "I have my methods." I dug out my entire stock of manly courage, breathed a short prayer and let her have it right in the thorax.”

“The blighter's manner was so cold and unchummy that I bit the bullet and had a dash at being airy."Oh, well, tra-la-la!" I said."Precisely, sir," said Jeeves.”

“Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.""But, dash it all...""Yes! You should be breeding children to...""No, really, I say, please!" I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women's clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn't in the smoking-room.”

“The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha's custom was the Splendide, and by the time I got there there wasn't a member of the staff who didn't seem to be feeling it deeply. I sympathized with them. I've had experience of Aunt Agatha at hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone grovelled before her that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn't a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said her say on the subject of the cooking, the waiting, the chambermaiding and everything else, with perfect freedom and candour. She had got the whole gang nicely under control by now. The manager, a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, simply tied himself into knots whenever she looked at him.”

“We run to height a bit in our family, and there's about five-foot-nine of Aunt Agatha, topped off with a beaky nose, an eagle eye, and a lot of grey hair, and the general effect is pretty formidable. Anyway, it never even occurred to me for a moment to give her the miss-in-baulk on this occasion. If she said I must go to Roville, it was all over except buying the tickets.”

“Mr Wooster, I am not ashamed to say that the tears came into my eyes as I listened to them. It amazes me that a man as young as you can have been able to plumb human nature so surely to its depths; to play with so unerring a hand on the quivering heart-strings of your reader; to write novels so true, so human, so moving, so vital!""Oh, it's just a knack," I said.”

“At that moment the gong sounded, and the genial host came tumbling downstairs like the delivery of a ton of coals.”

“And you call yourself a pal of mine!""Yes, I know; but there are limits.""Bertie," said Bingo reproachfully, "I saved your life once.""When?""Didn't I? It must have been some other fellow then. Well, anyway, we were boys together and all that. You can't let me down.""Oh, all right," I said. "But, when you say you haven't nerve enough for any dashed thing in the world, you misjudge yourself.”

“Are there any books of that sort nowadays? The only ones I ever see mentioned in the papers are about married couples who find life grey, and can't stick each other at any price.”

“Jeeves.""Sir?""Are you busy just now?""No, sir.""I mean, not doing anything in particular?""No, sir. It is my practice at this hour to read some improving book; but, if you desire my services, this can easily be postponed, or, indeed, abandoned altogether.”

“Tell him my future is in his hands and that, if the wedding bells ring out, he can rely on me, even unto half my kingdom. Well, call it ten quid. Jeeves would exert himself with ten quid on the horizon, what?”

“Bertie," he said, "I want your advice.""Carry on.""At least, not your advice, because that wouldn't be much good to anybody. I mean, you're a pretty consummate old ass, aren't you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings of course.""No, no, I see that.”

“You see I'm wearing the tie," said Bingo."It suits you beautiful," said the girl.Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner."Well, what's it going to be today?" asked the girl, introducing the business touch into the conversation.Bingo studied the menu devoutly."I'll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake, and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?"I gazed at the man, revolted. That he could have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick."Or how about a bit of hot steak-pudding, with a sparkling limado to wash it down?" said Bingo.You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. This chappie before me, who spoke in that absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head-waiter at Claridge's exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frite au gourmet au champignons, and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn't just right. Ghastly! Ghastly!A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it.”

“The man was goggling. His entire map was suffused with a rich blush. He looked like the Soul's Awakening done in pink.”

“A ripe suggestion," I said. "Where are you meeting her? At the Ritz?""Near the Ritz."He was geographically accurate. About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London and into this, if you'll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher.”

“I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter."Hallo!""Do you like the name Mabel?""No.""No?""No.""You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?""No."He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up."Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?""Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.”

“I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something. So that it was a bit of an anti-climax when I merely ran into young Bingo Little, looking perfectly foul in a crimson satin tie decorated with horseshoes.”

“In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove.""So I have been informed, sir.""Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances.”

“Some slight friction threatening in the Balkans, sir.”

“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're saying.”

“The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.”

“He looks much more like a lobster than most lobsters do.”

“Hugo?’ ‘Millicent?’ ‘Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.”

“Between an egg that is fried and an egg that is cremated there is a wide and substantial difference.”

“Little as he knew of women, he was aware that as a sex they are apt to be startled by the sight of men crawling out from under the seats of compartments.”

“In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’‘Do what?’‘Not strike lambs”

“They’re soul mates. She has about as much brain as a retarded billiards ball, and he approximately the same.”

“Good God, Clarence! You look like a bereaved tapeworm.”

“It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

“But when I say 'cow', don’t go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow.”

“It was a silver cow. But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.”

“He is England's premier fiend in human shape.”

“I don't know why it is, but I've never been able to bear with fortitude anything in the shape of a kid with golden curls. Confronted with one, I feel the urge to step on him or drop things on him from a height.”

“All nice girls sketch a little.”