One of those Hemingway sorts

He seemed to her like someone out of Ernest Hemingway, and she had always had a weakness for those rough, tough, devil-may-care Hemingway characters. Spiritual herself, she was attracted by roughness and toughness in the male. Clifton Besemer had had those qualities. So had A. B. Spottsworth. What had first impressed her in Clifton Bessemer had been the way he had swatted a charging fly with a rolled-up evening paper at the studio party where they had met, and in the case of A. B. Spottsworth the spark had been lit when she heard him one afternoon in conversation with a Paris taxi driver who had expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of his fare.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He can't hide his feelings

 Inasmuch as Captain Biggar, as we have seen, had not spoken his love but had let concealment like a worm i' the bud feed on his tomato-coloured cheek, it may seem strange that Mrs. Spottsworth should have known anything about the way he felt. But a woman can always tell. When she sees a man choke up and look like an embarrassed beetroot every time he catches her eye over the eland steaks and lime juice, she soon forms an adequate diagnosis of his case.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Talk sense!

     "It was merely because nothing of a suitable nature had presented itself by the time we reached the T's that I suggested Turf Accountant faute de mieux."

    "Faute de what?"

    "Mieux, m'lord. A French expression. We should say "for want of anything better."

    "What asses these Frenchmen are! Why can't they talk English?"

    "They are possibly more to be pitied than censured, m'lord. Early upbringing no doubt has a good deal to do with it."

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Gives new meaning to "dumb as a rock"

 William, ninth Earl of Rowcester, though intensely amiable and beloved by all who knew him, was far from being a mental giant. From his earliest years his intimates had been aware that, while his heart was unquestionably in the right place, there was a marked shortage of the little grey cells, and it was generally agreed that whoever won the next Nobel prize, it would not be Bill Rowcester. At the Drones Club, of which he had been a member since leaving school, it was estimated that in the matter of intellect he ranked somewhere in between Freddie Widgeon and Pongo Twistleton, which is pretty low down on the list. There were some who held his IQ to be inferior to that of Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps.

(from Ring for Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The etiquette of spooks

     The whole point about a hunter like Captain Biggar, if you face it squarely, is that he hunts. And, this being so, you expect him to stay put in and around his chosen hunting grounds. Met him in Kenya or Malaya or Borneo or India, and you feel no surprise. "Hullo there, Captain Biggar," you say. "How's the spooring?" And he replies that the spooring is tophole. Everything perfectly in order.

    But when you see him in the coffee room of an English country inn, thousands of miles from his natural habitat, you may be excused for harbouring a momentary suspicion that this is not the man in the flesh but rather his wraith or phantasm looking in, as wraiths and phantasms will, to pass the time of day.

    "Eek!" Mrs. Spottsworth exclaimed, visibly shaken. Since interesting herself in psychical research, she had often wished to see a ghost, but one likes to pick one's time and place for that sort of thing. One does not want spectres muscling in when one is enjoying a refreshing gin and tonic

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Someone kill that chicken!

 For a while, physical fatigue had rendered the performance a poor one. But gradually, as, artist-like, he became absorbed in his task, Archibald's voice gained in volume, in expression, and in all those qualities which make a hen-imitation a thing of beauty. Soon windows all along the street were opening, heads were being thrust out and complaining voices calling for the police. All the world loves a lover, but not when imitating hens outside their bedroom windows at three in the morning.

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

Lord Passfield

 In his book, Young Men in Spats, P. G. Wodehouse mentions Sidney, Lord Passfield as someone whom you don't find dancing. Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (1859-1947), was a noted British socialist, economist, and reformer who co-founded the London School of Economics. (Why one would not find Passfield dancing I could not say.)