"I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together."

"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."

"Captain Bradbury's right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery."

"I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing."

"Lady Constance's lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother's head."

"He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more."

"The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence."

"It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet."

"She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up."

"If you don't want me to attend the patient I'll go.''But she can't see a doctor now.''Why not?''She isn't well."

"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."

"Man's inability to get out of bed in the morning is a curious thing. One may reason with oneself clearly and forcibly without the slightest effect. One knows that delay means inconvenience. Perhaps it may spoil one's whole day. And one also knows that a single resolute heave will do the trick. But logic is of no use. One simply lies there."

"The butler entered the room a solemn procession of one."

"You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound."

"The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them."

"It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine."

"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."

"She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations."

"There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."

"It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required."

"The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it."

"Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?"

"Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels."

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."

"You won't mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I've just become a socialist. It's a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it."

"I couldn't have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham."

"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum."

"Girls do go for the finely-chiselled. And apart from his looks, he's and artist, and there's something about artists that seems to act on the other sex like catnip on cats."

"The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons."

"Had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers."

"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."

"Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow."

"Why don't you get a haircut you look like a chrysanthemum."

"She laughed - a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused."

"Squiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?''Oh, rather!''What do you do about it?''I generally take a couple of cocktails."

"To find a man's true character, play golf with him."

"I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head."

"He was always in a sort of fever because he was dropping behind schedule with his daily acts of kindness. However hard he tried, he'd fall behind; and then you would find him prowling about the house, setting such a clip to try and catch up with himself that Easeby was rapidly becoming a perfect hell for man and beast."

"Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship."

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French."

"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

"Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious."

"Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse."

"I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism."

"The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide."

"It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle."

"Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice."

"One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory."

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

"A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle."