My Man Jeeves Quotes

What ho!" I said. "What ho!" said Motty. "What ho! What ho!" "What ho! What ho! What ho!" After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare -- or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad -- who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.

What a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.

And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.

It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

Birds, except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.

I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don't you know...

Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like." Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have preferred this to me!

The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways. Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.

She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say how-d'you-do.

But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the foodstuffs.

Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a much-maligned man King Herod was.

She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs.

Would you say my head was like a pumpkin, Wooster?’ ‘Not a bit, old man.’ ‘Not like a pumpkin?’ ‘No, not like a pumpkin. A touch of the dome of St Paul’s, perhaps.

That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift the specie out of your pockets.

As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.

I'm bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.

You see, the catch about portrait painting— I've looked into the thing a bit— is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.

I had one of those ideas I do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class.

Come on," he said. "Bring the poker." I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it.

It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?" "No, sir." "Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born that way there's no use worrying.

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.

What I mean is, if you're absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence, the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.

Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

It's a mystery to me how kidnappers ever get caught.

It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish he'd got a soul or something

Good works?" "About the village, sir. Reading to the bedridden - chatting with the sick - that sort of thing, sir. We can but trust that good results will ensue." "Yes, I suppose so," I said doubtfully. "But, by gosh, if I were a sick man I'd hate to have a looney like young Bingo coming and gibbering at my bedside.

As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again.

When Nature makes a chump like dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one.

This Miss Wooster that I knew married a man named Spenser. Was she any relation?" "She is my Aunt Agatha," I replied, and I spoke with a good deal of bitterness, trying to suggest by my manner that he was exactly the sort of man, in my opinion, who would know my Aunt Agatha.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.

I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don't you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with Jeeves, and I'm game to advise any one about anything.

She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had

I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.

England is a jolly sight too small for anyone to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she's really on the warpath.

I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?" "Why don't I what?" "Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to ask." "But she says on her birthday." "Well, when is her birthday?" "Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten." "Forgotten!" I said. "Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten." "How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?" "I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it.

I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.

there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling. Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as every stepped, getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about it.

You see, the catch about portrait-painting—I've looked into the thing a bit—is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first.

NOW, touching this business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius.

A fellow told me one about Wembley yesterday," I said, to help on the cheery flow of conversation. "Stop me if you've heard it before. Chap goes up to deaf chap outside the exhibition and says, "Is this Wembley?" "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "No, Thursday," says deaf chap. Ha, ha, I mean, what?" The merry laughter froze on my lips. Sir Roderick sort of just waggled an eyebrow in my direction and I saw that it was back to the basket for Bertram. I never met a man who had such a knack of making a fellow feel like a waste-product.

I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don't you know;

What ho!” I said. “What ho!” said Motty. “What ho! What ho!” “What ho! What ho! What ho!” After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

Golf, like measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious.

A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's married at all.

How often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!

Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one of those round, bulging kids.

She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.

I knew what it felt like. I was once in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my autobiography.

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.

On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.

I'm bound to say I was not feeling entirely at my ease. There is something about the man that is calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.

All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping is!

If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.

That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of thing, what?

Do you mind not intoning the responses, Jeeves?" I said. "This is a most complicated story for a man with a headache to have to tell, and if you interrupt you'll make me lose the thread. As a favour to me, therefore, don't do it. Just nod every now and then to show that you're following me." I closed my eyes and marshalled the facts. "To start with then, Jeeves, you may or may not know that Mr Sipperley is practically dependent on his Aunt Vera." "Would that be Miss Sipperley of the Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, in Yorkshire, sir?" "Yes. Don't tell me you know her!" "Not personally, sir. But I have a cousin residing in the village who has some slight acquaintance with Miss Sipperley. He has described her to me as an imperious and quick-tempered old lady. ... But I beg your pardon, sir, I should have nodded." "Quite right, you should have nodded. Yes, Jeeves, you should have nodded. But it's too late now.

And then, just when I was beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on it.

 'It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.' 'Yes, sir.' 'What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?' 'One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.' 'You mean imagination boggles?' 'Yes, sir.' I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled

He's quite a bit of a snob, you know, and when he hears I'm going to marry the daughter of an earl - " "I say, old man," I couldn't help saying, "aren't you looking ahead rather far?" "Oh, that's all right. It's true nothing's actually settled yet, but she practically told me the other day she was fond of me." "What!" "Well, she said that the sort of man she liked was the self-reliant, manly man with strength, good looks, character, ambition, and initiative." "Leave me, laddie," I said. "Leave me to my fried egg.

It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish he'd got a soul or something,

Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him.

Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case.

that he has got a pippin of an idea,

it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole

You're sitting in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly fish.

It was foolish of her to have expected such a state of things to last, for what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of which Fate lies in wait for us

My God, man!" I gargled. "The cravat! The gent's neckwear! Why? For what reason?

Man and boy, Jeeves, I have been in some tough spots in my time, but this one wins the mottled oyster.

In a picturesque little châlet high up in the mountains, covered with snow and edelweiss (which is a flower that grows in the Alps, and you are not allowed to pick it),

Modesty, if one may trust to the verdict of the mass of mankind, is a good quality. It sweetens the soul and makes for a kindly understanding of one's fellows.

of the afternoon Mr. Fitz-Wattle----

apologize

All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping

How would this do you, Bingo?" I said at length. "A few plovers' eggs to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold salmon, some cold curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and cream with a bite of cheese to finish?" I don't know that I had expected the man actually to scream with delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his pet dishes, but I had expected him to say something.

Dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivaled as an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.

A few moments later the man was with us, looking so brainy and intelligent that my heart leaped up as if I had beheld a rainbow in the sky. 'Oh, Jeeves,' I yipped. 'Oh, Jeeves,' yipped Aunt Dahlia, dead heating with me.

I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. ... There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls. "?" "!" Three minutes later we had joined the Planters. I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilisation. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.

The Rocky Mountains, that traditional stamping-ground for the heartbroken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stem mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear.

I can’t help your troubles,” said Motty firmly. “Listen to me, old thing: this is the first time in my life that I’ve had a real chance to yield to the temptations of a great city. What’s the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don’t yield to them?

I suppose you haven't breakfasted?” “I have not yet breakfasted.” “Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?” “No, thank you.” She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.

I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare - or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad - who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.

Roland did not like being thought a worm, but it was infinitely better than being regarded as an interesting case by the house-surgeon of a hospital. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that it is better that people should say of you, "There he goes!" than that they should say, "How peaceful he looks".

have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found

He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on.

Come to the bit about soft silk shirts for evening wear?" I asked carelessly. "Yes, sir," said Jeeves, in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend. "And if I may be pardoned for saying so - " "You don't like it?" "No, sir. I do not. Soft silk shirts with evening costume are not worn, sir." "Jeeves," I said, looking the blighter diametrically in the centre of the eyeball, "they're dashed well going to be. I may as well tell you now that I have ordered a dozen of those shirtings from Peabody and Simms, and it's no good looking like that, because I am jolly well adamant." "If I might - " "No, Jeeves," I said, raising my hand, "argument is useless. Nobody has a greater respect than I have for your judgment in socks, in ties, and - I will go farther - in spats; but when it comes to evening shirts your nerve seems to fail you. You have no vision. You are prejudiced and reactionary. Hidebound is the word that suggests itself. It may interest you to learn that when I was at Le Touquet the Prince of Wales buzzed into the Casino one night with soft silk shirt complete." "His Royal Highness, sir, may permit himself a certain licence which in your own case - " "No, Jeeves," I said, firmly, "it's no use. When we Woosters are adamant, we are - well, adamant, if you know what I mean." "Very good, sir." I could see the man was wounded, and, of course, the whole episode had been extremely jarring and unpleasant; but these things have to be gone through. Is one a serf or isn't one? That's what it all boils down to.

He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange back-yard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect. A millionaire several times over, Mr. Pett would cheerfully have given much of his wealth to have been elsewhere at that moment. Such was the agitated state of his mind that, when a hand was laid lightly upon his arm as he was about to follow his wife into the room, he started so violently that his hat flew out of his hand.

He proposed to Alice Weston. She refused him. 'It's not because I'm not fond of you. I think you're the nicest man I ever met.' A good deal of assiduous attention had enabled Henry to win this place in her affections. He had worked patiently and well before actually putting his fortune to the test. 'I'd marry you tomorrow if things were different. But I'm on the stage, and I mean to stick there. Most of the girls want to get off it, but not me. And one thing I'll never do is marry someone who isn't in the profession. My sister Genevieve did, and look what happened to her. She married a commercial traveller, and take it from me he travelled.

There was Bobbie, ambling gently through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a chump of the first water. And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn’t be a chump. And Nature, mind you, on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn’t. I forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.

I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill.' 'It can't go on - this sort of thing - Jeeves.' 'We must hope for the best, sir.' 'Can't you think of anything to do?' 'I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far without success. I am placing three silk shirts - the dove-coloured, the light blue, and the mauve - in the first long drawer, sir.' 'You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?' 'For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the tan socks in the upper drawer on the left.' He strapped the suit-case and put it on a chair. 'A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.' 'You understate it, Jeeves.' He gazed meditatively out of the window. 'In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great city. It is a passion with her to ride in taxi-cabs, sir. Whenever the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable her to gratify this desire.' 'I love to have these little chats with you about your female relatives, Jeeves,' I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me down, and I was fed up with him. 'But I don't see what all this has got to do with my trouble.' 'I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of our neckties on the mantelpiece, sir for you to select according to your preference. I should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.

[...]only a fool attempts honesty with a man in love. In my experience, the blunter one is enumerating the deficiencies of an affianced, the more likely that marriage becomes - placing you on the wrong side of a wronged wife until divorce do them part.

Не знам какво мислите вие, но аз съм забелязал, че от време на време, както си пасете кротко из попрището на живота, изневиделица ви сдрусват събития, преценявани като съдбовни дори от невъоръжено око. Вътрешен глас ви нашепва, че те вовеки веков ще останат запечатани в паметта ви. Година подир година редовно ще възкръсват в спомените ви тъкмо когато сте най-настроени за блажена дрямка и ще ви карат да се мятате в леглото като сьомга на кука.