P. G. Wodehouse quotes:
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Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.
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Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
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To find a man's true character, play golf with him.
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Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests!
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Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.
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Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.
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Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.
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Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?"
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There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
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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.
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Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.
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Didn't Frankenstein get married?Did he? said Eggy. I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.
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I always advise people never to give advice.
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Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
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He was in the frame of mind when a weaker man would have started writing poetry.
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And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned.
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Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.
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When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.
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Suiffy, 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.
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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.
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But the work had told upon the Editor. Work of that sort carries its penalties with it. Success means absorption, and absorption spells softening of the brain.
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Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
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She had more curves than a scenic railway
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One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.
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Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.
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And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.
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I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralyzed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without -- a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate.
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The years fell away from him till, in an instant, from being a rather poorly preserved, liverish greybeard of sixty-five or so, he became a sprightly lad of twenty-one in a world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks. In other words, taking it by and large, George felt pretty good. The impossible had happened; Heaven had sent him an adventure, and he didn't care if it snowed.
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But those who read thrillers are an impatient race. They chafe at scenic rhapsodies and want to get on to the rough stuff.
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Don't come near the flat!''But it's my own flat.''I can't help that. Aunt Isabel doesn't like you. She asked me what you did for a living. And when I told her you didn't do anything she said she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget it."
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To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying.
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I'm all for rational enjoyment, and so forth, but I think a fellow makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan
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Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
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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.
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There are three things in the world that he held in the smallest esteem - slugs, poets and caddies with hiccups.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with 'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.
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[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.
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As a child of eight Mr. Trout had once kissed a girl of six under the mistletoe at a Christmas party, but there his sex life had come to abrupt halt.
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Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
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The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap.
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Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball, which presents no difficulties whetever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock. I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I'd strangle him. But I suppose he's been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.
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Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.
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The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.
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I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
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Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?
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What I'm worrying about is what Tom is going to say when he starts talking." "Uncle Tom?" "I wish there was something else you could call him except 'Uncle Tom,' " Aunt Dahlia said a little testily. "Every time you do it, I expect to see him turn black and start playing the banjo.
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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.
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This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.
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The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
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At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
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As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
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Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share.
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The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg.
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To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.
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Golf is the Great Mystery. Like some capricous goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock-knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing up snappy seventy-fours.
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Well, you know what the Fulham Road's like. If your top-hat blows off into it, it has about as much chance as a rabbit at a dogshow.
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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.
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My motto is 'Love and let love' - with the one stipulation that people who love in glass-houses should breathe on the windows.
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Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
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She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper.
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I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course.
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It is not mere technical skill that makes a man a golfer, it is the golfing soul.
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There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
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I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover-the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all.
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It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
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Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.
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I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well." ~ Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
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It's not that I don't trust you, Dunstable, it's simply that I don't trust you.
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She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.
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The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority.
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There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'" "The mood will pass, sir.
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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?
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-'What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?' There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter
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I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.
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There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.
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One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room.
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I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat.
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I pity the shrimp that matches wits with you Jeeves
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Well, there it is. That's Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.
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You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz.
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Bertie," he said, "I want your advice." "Carry on." "At least, not your advice, because that wouldn't be much good to anybody. I mean, you're a pretty consummate old [prat], aren't you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings, of course." "No, no, I see that." "What I wish you to do is put the whole thing to that fellow Jeeves of yours, and see what he suggests.
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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.
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Oh, Jeeves,' I said; 'about that check suit.' Yes, sir?' Is it really a frost?' A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.' But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.' Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.' He's supposed to be one of the best men in London.' I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.
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Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit." "Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction.
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We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. "Nothing further Jeeves", I said with quiet dignity.
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"After all, golf is only a game", said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they are saying.
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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.
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Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did.
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Mr Howard Saxby, literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.
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He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
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The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
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Golf, like measles, should be caught young.
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Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious.
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It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore! The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky.
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...what I feel we ought to do at this juncture is to dash off somewhere where it's quiet and there aren't so many housesdancing the 'Blue Danube' and shove some tea into ourselves. And over the pot and muffins I shall have something veryimportant to say to you.
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It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.
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Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.
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It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.
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He groaned slightly and winced like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch.
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I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis.
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Some time ago," he said, "--how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life.
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Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.
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[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments.
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We must always remember, however,' said Psmith gravely, 'that poets are also God's creatures.
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Psmith is the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a plate with watercress round it, thus enabling me to avoid the blood, sweat and tears inseparable from an author's life.
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If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn't shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race.
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Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
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When it comes to letting the world in on the secrets of his heart, he has about as much shrinking reticence as a steam calliope.
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Golf acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman Emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip shot. If Cleopatra had been ousted in the first round of the Ladies' Singles, we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness.
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It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.
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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
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It was a silver cow. But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.
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The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.
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Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.But, dash it all...Yes! You should be breeding children to...No, really, I say, please! I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women's clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn't in the smoking-room.
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...though the conversation always touched an exceptionally high level of brilliance, there was apt to be a good deal of sugar thrown about.
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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.
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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.