“Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“Lord Marshmoreton: I wish I could get you see my point of view.
George Bevan: I do see your point of view. But dimly. You see, my own takes up such a lot of the foreground”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“The proprietor of the grocery store on the corner was bidding a silent farewell to a tomato which even he, though a dauntless optimist, had been compelled to recognize as having outlived its utility.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“Normally he was fond of most things. He was a good-natured and cheerful young man, who liked life and the great majority of those who lived it contemporaneously with himself. He had no enemies and many friends.
But today he had noticed from the moment he had got out of bed that something was amiss with the world. Either he was in the grip of some divine discontent due to the highly developed condition of his soul, or else he had a grouch. One of the two.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“What George was thinking was that the late king Herod had been unjustly blamed for a policy which had been both statesmanlike and in the interests of the public. He was blaming the mawkish sentimentality of the modern legal system which ranks the evisceration and secret burial of small boys as a crime.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“Hear him now as he toils. He has a long garden-implement in his hand, and he is sending up the death-rate in slug circles with a devastating rapidity. "Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay Ta-ra-ra BOOM—" And the boom is a death-knell. As it rings softly out on the pleasant spring air, another stout slug has made the Great Change.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“peculiarity of golf, as of love, that it temporarily changes the natures of its victims;”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“Like one kissed by a goddess in a dream, he walked on air; and, while one is walking on air, it is easy to overlook the boulders in the path.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from A Damsel in Distress
“You've seen Star Wars?'
'Seen it and denounced it.'
'You've denounced Star Wars?'
She looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Hollywood should not glorify witches.'
'I think you've missed the point...'
'I also denounced Harry Potter.'
'Really?'
'Yes.'
'Because...'
'...because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches.'
'Oda, what do you do for fun?'
She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humour, 'I denounce things.”
― Kate Griffin, quote from The Midnight Mayor
“From dawn each day the boats traveled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead. While on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the riverbank to greet them.”
― Edward Rutherfurd, quote from Russka: the Novel of Russia
“As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job — popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited make them answer a string of damn fool questions when they want to do something else — they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Scoop
“She reached her waiting chair and shorthand pad, beside Leach, as a far-off erratic voice came indistinctly over the loudspeaker, and then suddenly broke out loudly and clearly. "—calling from Frankfurt am Main, this is Signal Corps Captain Foss calling from Frankfurt am Main. Do we have the White House in Washington?" Calmly Secretary of State Eaton addressed the microphone box. "This is the White House, Captain. This is the Secretary of State. We are assembled and ready for the conference call." "All right, sir. The President is waiting to speak to you." A muffled crossing of voices slapped against the loudspeaker, and then a jagged arrow of static, and at once T. C.'s hurried, bouncy, unceremonious voice was upon them in the Cabinet Room. "Arthur, are you there?”
― Irving Wallace, quote from The Man
“When the reader has stopped to wonder at your delamificatious vocabulary, or, worse, when the reader has stopped because the word you've used has no more meaning to him than a random ptliijnbvc of letters, the reader is not involved in your story. ... Generally, saying 'edifice' instead of 'building' doesn't tell your reader anything about the building; it tells the reader that you know that word edifice.”
― Howard Mittelmark, quote from How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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