P.G. Wodehouse
a sampling of his humor
“Feminine psychology is admitted odd, sir.”
-“Jeeves” in P.G. Wodehouse’s Thank You, Jeeves
“…he wished that Providence had never endowed women with this sixth sense. A woman with merely five took quite enough handling.”
-P.G. Wodehouse
“He found himself face to face with an extraordinarily pretty girl. She was a red-haired girl, with the beautiful ivory skin which goes with red hair. …She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen…But there was a subtle something about her. A sort of, how-shall-one-put-it, which he had never encountered before. He swallowed convulsively. …At last, he told himself, he was in love, really in love, and at first sight, too, which made it all the more impressive. …But she had bitten him in the arm. That was hardly the right spirit. That, he felt, constituted an obstacle.”
-from The Girl on the Boat by P.G. Wodehouse
Two Ways of Saying the Same Thing
(from Weekend Wodehouse)
“Miss BLAKE Susan Susie.” He took her other hand in his. His voice rang out clear and unimpeded. “It cannot have escaped your notice that I have long entertained towards you sentiments warmer and deeper than those of ordinary friendship. It is love, Susan, that has been animating my bosom. Love, first a tiny seed, has burgeoned in my heart till, blazing into flame, it has swept away on the crest of its wave my diffidence, my doubt, my fears, and my foreboding, and now, like the topmost topaz of some ancient tower, it cries to all the world in a voice of thunder: ‘You are mine! My mate! Predestined to me since Time first began!’ As the star guides the mariner when, battered by boiling billows, he hies him home to the haven of hope and happiness, so do you gleam upon me along life’s rough road and seem to say, ‘Have courage, George! I am here!’ Susan, I am not an eloquent man–I cannot speak fluently as I could wish–but these simple words which you have just heard come from the heart, from the unspotted heart of an English gentleman. Susan, I love you. Will you be my wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help-meet, consort, partner or better half?”
“Ronnie sort of grunted and said ‘I say!’ and I said ‘Hullo and he said ‘Will you marry me?’ and I said ‘All right,’ and he said ‘I ought to warn you, I despise all women,’ and I said ‘And I loathe all men’ and he said ‘Right-ho, I think we shall be very happy.’”
Read Wodehouse on Redheads at Carrots and Freckles!
Read random selections from Wodehouse at He Pottered Off Pigwards
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