Quotes from Right Ho, Jeeves

P.G. Wodehouse ·  224 pages

Rating: (19.8K votes)


“I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest of suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very
different things.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“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, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



“I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves, I said, but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“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, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Jeeves, I'm engaged."
"I hope you will be very happy, sir."
"Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



“The thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was, frankly appalled me.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the way she persisted in missing the gist.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“These dreamer types do live, don't they?”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Bertie, do you read Tennyson?"

"Not if I can help.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



“Am taking legal advice to ascertain whether strangling an idiot nephew counts as murder. If it doesn't look out for yourself.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Angela nearly got inhaled by a shark while aquaplaning.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“A chap's bedroom – you can't get way from it – is his castle, and he has every right to look askance if gargoyles come glaring in at him.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Gussie and I, as I say, had rather lost touch, but all the same I was exercised about the poor fish, as I am about all my pals, close or distant, who find themselves treading upon Life's banana skins.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



“But why do you want me? I mean, what am I? Ask yourself that."

"I often have.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn't charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective completely.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantlepiece. I've tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“She had turned away and was watching a duck out on the lake. It was tucking into weeds, a thing I've never been able to understand anyone wanting to do. Though I suppose, if you face it squarely, they're no worse than spinach.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



“Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something—a sculptor he would have been, no doubt—who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course, but the point I'm working round to is that there were a couple of lines that went, if I remember correctly: She starts. She moves. She seems to feel The stir of life along her keel. And what I'm driving at is that you couldn't get a better description of what happened to Gussie as I spoke these heartening words. His brow cleared, his eyes brightened, he lost that fishy look, and he gazed at the slug, which was still on the long, long trail with something approaching bonhomie. A marked improvement.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“The discovery of some toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the merry old Bertram.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“We Woosters can bite the bullet.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves


“It was some time before this happened, for he had got a very fine hand indeed. I suppose it wasn't often that the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School came across a man public-spirited enough to call their head master a silly ass, and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain manner. Gussie may have been one over the eight, but as far as the majority of those present were concerned he was sitting on top of the world.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Right Ho, Jeeves



About the author

P.G. Wodehouse
Born place: in Guildford, Surrey, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 15, 1881
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