“She seemed glad to see me. In fact, she actually said she was glad to see me – a statement no other aunt on the list would have committed herself to, the customary reaction of these near and dear ones to the spectacle of Bertram arriving for a visit being a sort of sick horror”

“I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread- and-butter-offering, yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia's type nearly always like at first sight.”

“She had more curves than a scenic railway”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And until tonight I had always felt that there was a lot in it. I had never scorned a woman myself, but Pongo Twistleton once scorned an aunt of his, flatly refusing to meet her son Gerald at Paddington and give him lunch and see him off to school at Waterloo, and he never heard the end of it.”

“Tut!' I said. 'What did you say?' 'I said "Tut!"' 'Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at.”

“There is nothing that so satisfactorily unites individuals who have been so unfortunate as to quarrel amongst themselves as a strong mutual dislike for some definite person.”

“Gussie is an orange-juice addict. He drinks nothing else.' 'I was not aware of that, sir.' 'I have it from his own lips. Whether from some hereditary taint, or because he promised his mother he wouldn't, or simply because he doesn't like the taste of the stuff, Gussie Fink-Nottle has never in the whole course of his career pushed so much as the simplest gin and tonic over the larynx”