No one likes the honorable Galahad

     There came the sound of wheels grinding to a standstill on the gravel outside the front door.

    "Clarence," said Gally.

    "And Mr. Landseer."

    "Don't say 'And Mr. Landseer' in that soupy tone of voice, said Gally sternly. "He hasn't come to steal the spoons."

    "If he is a friend of yours, I should imagine that he is quite capable of doing so. Is he wanted by the police?"

    "How I sympathize with the police," said Lady Hermione. "I know just how they feel."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Painting of a pickled porker

 Freddie, hastening to the bed and gazing down at the canvas which lay upon it, had started back like one who sees some dreadful sight. He was now replacing his monocle in his eye, preparatory to trying again, and Bill looked at him dully.

"You notice something wrong, too?"

"Wrong? My dear old bird!"

"Don't forget it's not finished."

Freddie shook his head. "It's no good taking that line, Blister. Thank heaven it isn't. One wouldn't want a thing like that to spread any further. What on earth made you depict this porker as tight?"

"Tight?"

"The pig I see here is a pig that has obviously been on the toot of a lifetime for days on end. Those glassy eyes. That weak smile. I've seen old Tippy look just like that."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Like a merry-go-round

     Many lovers in his position might have consoled themselves with the reflection that Freddie, being now a married man, was presumably out of the race for Veronica Wedge's hand and heart. But Tipton had had the wrong sort of upbringing to permit of his drawing comfort from any thought like that. The son of parents who after marrying each other had almost immediately started marrying other people with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, his had been one of those childhoods where the faintly bewildered offspring finds himself passed from hand to hand like a medicine ball. And, grown to riper years, he had seen among his friends and acquaintance far too much of that Ex-Wife's Heart Balm Society Love Tangle stuff to be a believer in the durability of the married state.

    That very Doris Jimpson, of whom he had once supposed himself enamoured, had become Doris Boole, Doris Busbridge, and Doris Applejohn in such rapid succession that the quickness of the hand almost deceived the eye.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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)