P.G. Wodehouse is one author whose books never fail to make me laugh. Hope you also enjoy the following excepts from his books, thanks!
“Love, Miss Halliday, is a delicate plant. It needs tending, nurturing, assiduous fostering. This cannot be done by throwing the breakfast bacon at a husband's head.”
"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 backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect."
"I mean to say, when a girl, offered a good man’s heart, laughs like a bursting paper bag and tells him not to be a silly ass, the good man is entitled, I think, to assume that the whole thing is off."
"My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you."
"No, thanks."
"I say to myself--"
"But not to me."
"Do listen for a second."
"I won't."
"Right ho, then. I am dumb."
"And have been from a child."
"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.”
"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."
“One of the advantages a sister has when arguing with a brother is that she is under no obligation to be tactful. If she wishes to tell him that he is an idiot and ought to have his head examined, she can do so and, going further, can add that it is a thousand pities that no-one ever thought of smothering him with a pillow in his formative years.”
"And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need."
"It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.”
'But then everybody says that, though you have a brain like a peahen, you're the soul of kindness and generosity.'
Well, I was handicapped here by the fact that, never having met a peahen, I was unable to estimate the quality of these fowls' intelligence, but she had spoken as if they were a bit short of the grey matter, and I was about to ask her who the hell she meant by 'everybody', when she resumed.
...And there on the path, as if they had been waiting for me by appointment, stood a policeman and a parlourmaid.
"How did you get in?"
"Through the window. Being an old friend of the family, if you follow me."
"Old friend of the family, are you?"
"Oh, very. Very. Very old. Oh, a very old friend of the family."...
"I've never seen him before," said the parlourmaid.
I looked at the girl with positive loathing.
"No," I said. "You have never seen me before. But I'm an old friend of the family."
"Then why didn't you ring at the front door?"
"I didn't want to give any trouble."
"It's no trouble answering front doors, that being what you're paid for," said the parlourmaid virtuously. "I've never seen him before in my life," she added, perfectly gratuitously.
A horrid girl.
“But I say, really, you know, I am an old friend of the family. Why, by Jove, now I remember, there's a photograph of me in the drawing-room. Well, I mean, that shows you!"
"If there is," said the policeman.
"I've never seen it," said the parlourmaid.
I absolutely hated this girl.
"You would have seen it if you had done your dusting more conscientiously," I said severely. And I meant it to sting, by Jove!
"It is not a parlourmaid's place to dust the drawing-room," she sniffed haughtily.
"No," I said bitterly. "It seems to be a parlourmaid's place to lurk about and hang about and - er - waste her time fooling about in the garden with policemen who ought to be busy about their duties elsewhere."
"It's a parlourmaid's place to open the front door to visitors. Them that don't come in through windows."
I perceived that I was getting the loser's end of the thing.
Don't leave me, Bertie. I'm lost.'
'What do you mean, lost?'
'I came out for a walk and suddenly discovered after a mile or two that I didn't know where on earth I was. I've been wandering round in circles for hours.'
'Why didn't you ask the way?'
'I can't speak a word of French.' ...
'Well, why didn't you call a taxi?'
'I suddenly discovered that I've left all my money in my hotel.'
'You could have taken a cab and paid it when you got to the hotel.'
'Yes, but I suddenly discovered, dash it, that I'd forgotten it's name."
We drifted to one of the eleven cafes which jostled each other along the street and I ordered restoratives.
'What on earth are you doing in Paris?'
'Bertie, old man,' said Biffy solemnly, 'I came here to try and forget.'
'Well, you've certainly succeeded.'
Really enjoyed reading these short passages from different novels of P G Wodehouse. Thank you for thinking of doing this.
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