The definition of "hoity-toity"

 It is the boast of Barribault's Hotel, which caters principally to American millionaires and visiting maharajahs, that it can make the wrong sort of client feel more like a piece of cheese - and a cheap yellow piece of cheese at that - than any other similar establishment in the world. The personnel of its staff are selected primarily for their ability to curl the upper lip and raise the eyebrows just that extra quarter of an inch which makes all the difference.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Speaking for yourself

     "I do not like your tone, Reginald."

    "Never mind about my tone. I'll attend to my tone. Of all the bally low hounds that ever stepped you are the lowest. So this is what the friendship of years amounts to, is it? You crawl in here and try to cut me out with the girl I love."

    "Well, dash it -"

    "That is quite enough."

    "But, dash it -"

    "I wish to hear no more."

    "But, dash it, I love her, too. It's not my fault if you happen to love her, too, is it? I mean to say, if a fellow loves a girl and another fellow loves her, too, you can't expect the fellow who loves the girl to edge out because he happens to be acquainted with the fellow who loves her, too. When it comes to Love, a chap has got to look out for his own interests, hasn't he? You didn't find Romeo or any of those chaps easing away from the girl just to oblige a pal, did you? Certainly not."

(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He would have preferred a gentle breeze

     When large, earnest men with simple, orderly minds fall desperately in love with small, reckless, impulsive girls whose motto is "Anything goes," the result is not infrequently to make them feel as if their souls had been stirred up with a pole; and in conveying the impression that he was labouring under a nervous strain Bill lister in no way deceived his public. Ever since the tempestuous entry into his life of Prudence Garland, he had been feeling almost without interruption rather as one might imagine a leaf to feel when caught up and whirled about in an autumn gale.

    Bill's was essentially a simple, orderly mind. Nature had intended him to be one of those men to whom love, when it comes, comes gently and gradually, progressing in easy stages from the first meeting in rigidly conventional circumstances to the decorous wedding with the ushers showing friends and relatives into the ringside pews. If ever there was a man born to be the morning-coated central figure in a wedding group photograph, it was William Galahad Lister.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Name your doctor

     "Harley Street," he said to the driver. "And don't spare the horses."

    Harley street, as everybody knows, is where medical men collect in gangs, and almost every door you see has burst out into a sort of eczema of brass plates. At a house about halfway down the thoroughfare the following members of the healing profession had elected to mess in together: Hartley Rampling, P. P. Borstal, G. V. Cheesewright, Sir Abercrombie Fitch-Fitch, and E. Jimpson Murgatroyd. The one Tipton was after was E. Jimpson Murgatroyd.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Don't let him pick her friends!

 "I know I should make the most searching inquiries about any young man whom I heard calling Veronica a dream rabbit. I don't wonder Dora is uneasy. She tells me Prudence has been seeing a great deal of Galahad recently, and goodness knows whom he may not have introduced to her. Galahad's idea of a suitable friend for an impressionable young girl might quite easily be a race-course tout or a three-card-trick man."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

What to expect from a Full Moon

 Money is always important in the solution of Blandings impasses, but here it is ubiquitous. Not only do Bill's and Prue's problems require a fiscal solution, but the hopes of the Wedges are shaped by Tipton Plimsoll's fortune, Freddie Threepwood pursues an immense dogfood order like some Ahab hunting a mercantile Moby Dick, and in the end Lord Emsworth must literally purchase his peace of mind.

Only Galahad and his spiritual sister, the Empress, rise above the mercenary approach, the great pig responding solely to simple greed and the aging rake moved by sympathy for star-crossed love and a pure, almost ascetic devotion to creating maximum chaos.

(from the Preface to P. G. Wodehouse's Full Moon, written by D. R. Benson)

Cutting it thin

         Mabry began to eject shells from his gun and to reload. Only a solitary bullet had remained in his gun. As he loaded up there was absolute silence. He was conscious then of the cottonwood leaves whispering in the cool morning air. He was conscious that his cheek stung and that otherwise he was unwounded.

    Once more he had come through. How many breaks could a man get?

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)