Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

“ I cannot plead ignorance of the golfer's point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to one whose soul is in the game, as the professor's was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all other agonies. I knew that if I scraped through by the smallest possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o' nights broken. He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only used his iron at the tenth hole all would have been well; that if he had aimed more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear and blank ”

“ George sank back as if he had been hit between the eyes. The train had moved out of the dimness of the station by now, and the sun was shining brightly on the speaker, illuminating his knobbly shoulders, his craggy jaw, and, above all, the shockingly choleric look in his eyes. To reply "Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yes" to such a man would obviously be madness.
"The advice I give to all young men who come in here behaving like soda-water siphons is to go out and make a point of speaking to at least three perfect strangers every day." ”

“ How can a man complain of harsh treatment when he is made master of his own fate? Besides, I don’t ask you to do anything difficult. I merely bid you perform what must be to you a simple shot. You boast of your unerring aim. Now is the time to prove it. Clear the way there!"
Walter Fürst flung himself on his knees before the Governor.
“Your Highness,” he cried, “none deny your power. Let it be mingled with mercy. It is excellent, as an English poet will say in a few hundred years, to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. ”

“ In a calmer moment I might have realized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal of difference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power of logical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to center in the hen, now half a field in front of me.
We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we crossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever been in my life. ”

“ We're like two rogues in a pillory. ’Tis rank disgrace for one who wears a sword to stand as sentry o’er an empty hat. To make obeisance to a hat! I’faith, such a command is downright foolery!”
“Well,” said Friesshardt, “and why not bow before an empty hat? Thou hast oft bow’d before an empty skull. Ha, ha! I was always one for a joke, yer know.”
“Here come some people,” said Leuthold. “At last! And they're only the rabble, after all. You don't catch any of the better sort of people coming here.”
A crowd was beginning to collect on the edge of the meadow. ”

“ Rounding the corner was the man with the pitchfork. And behind him followed a vast crowd.
But the pleasantest of functions must end, and, just as the setting sun was gilding the spire of the ivy-covered church of St. Barnabas the Resilient, where George as a child had sat so often, enlivening the tedium of the sermon by making faces at the choir-boys, a damp and bedraggled figure might have been observed crawling painfully along the High Street of East Wobsley in the direction of the cosy little cottage known to its builder as Chatsworth and to the village tradesmen as "Mulliner's." ”

“ Alas, poor Hawk!
"Nobody's safe with a man of that sort hiring out a boat."
Oh, miserable Hawk!
"But why on earth," I asked, as calmly as possible, "should he play a trick like that on Professor Derrick, Chase?"
"Pure animal spirits, probably. Or he may, as I say, be a minion."
I was hot all over.
"I shall tell father that," said Phyllis in her most decided voice, "and see what he says. I don't wonder at the man taking to drink after doing such a thing."
"I—I think you're making a mistake," I said.
"I never make mistakes," Mr. Chase replied. ”

“ In a picturesque little châlet high up in the mountains, covered with snow and edelweiss (which is a flower that grows in the Alps, and you are not allowed to pick it) , dwelt Tell, his wife Hedwig, and his two sons, Walter and William. Such a remarkable man was Tell that I think I must devote a whole chapter to him and his exploits. There was really nothing he could not do. He was the best shot with the cross–bow in the whole of Switzerland. He had the courage of a lion, the sure-footedness of a wild goat, the agility of a squirrel, and a beautiful beard. ”

“ The hen slipped from my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment overcome by the surprise of being at liberty once more, then fled and intrenched itself in some bushes at the farther end of the lawn.
There are times when the most resolute man feels that he can battle no longer with fate; when everything seems against him and the only course left is a dignified retreat. ”

“ It is love, Susan, that has been animating my bosom. Love, first a tiny seed, has grown and grown in my heart till, blazing into flame, it has swept away on the crest of its wave my diffidence, my doubt, my fears, and my foreboding, and now, like the topmost topaz of some ancient tower, it cries to all the world in a voice of thunder: 'You are mine! ”

“ And to support her statement there floated through the window a cackling, which, for volume and variety of key, beat anything that Garnet had ever heard. Judging from the noise, it seemed as if England had been drained of fowls and the entire tribe of them dumped into the yard of the Ukridge's farm.
"There seems to have been no stint," he said, sitting down. "Did you order a million or only nine hundred thousand?"
"Good many, aren't there?" said Ukridge complacently. "But that's what we want. No good starting on a small scale. The more you have, the bigger the profits." ”

“ I promised you your life, and I will give you your life. But you are a dangerous man, Tell, and against such must I guard myself. You have told me your murderous purpose. I must look to it that that purpose is not fulfilled. Life I promised you, and life I will give you. But of freedom I said nothing. In my castle at Küssnacht there are dungeons where no ray of sun or moon ever falls. Chained hand and foot in one of these, you will hardly aim your arrows at me. It is rash, Tell, to threaten those who have power over you. ”

“ But, like all Mulliners, he had the right stuff in him. As he reached the platform and strode along it to the train, his teeth were set, his eyes shone with an almost fanatical light of determination, and he intended before his journey was over to conduct three heart-to-heart chats if he had to sing every bar of them.
The compariment into which he had made his way was empty at the moment, but just before the train started a very large, fierce-looking man got in. George would have preferred somebody a little less formidable for his first subject, but he braced himself and bent forward. ”

“ As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis.
They passed me without a look.
I wandered on in quite a fervor of self-pity. I was in one of those moods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the future stretches blank and gray in front of one. In such a mood it is imperative that one should seek distraction. The shining example of Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drink would be a nuisance. Work was what I wanted. ”

“ I am going to put this apple on your son’s head. He will be placed a hundred yards away from you, and if you do not hit the apple with your first shot your life shall pay forfeit.”
And he regarded Tell with a look of malicious triumph.
“Your Excellency, it cannot be!” cried Tell; “the thing is too monstrous. Perhaps your Excellency is pleased to jest. You cannot bid a father shoot an apple from off his son’s head! ”

“ Ukridge petted Edwin and sewed, and Ukridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling Mose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write—and write—and write—and go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyes refused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come to feel that it was all for the best. A man must go through the fire before he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. What we lose on the swings we make up on the roundabouts. ”

“ The train was now approaching the dear old familiar East Wobsley country. He began to recognize landmarks. A wave of sentiment poured over George as he thought of Susan, and he reached for the bag of buns which he had bought at the refreshment room at Ippleton. Sentiment always made him hungry.
He took his thermos out of the suit-case, and, unscrewing the top, poured himself out a cup of tea. Then, placing the thermos on the seat, he drank. ”

“ If you do not shoot you die with the boy. Come, come, Tell, why so cautious? They always told me that you loved perilous enterprises, and yet when I give you one you complain. I could understand anybody else shrinking from the feat. But you! Hitting apples at a hundred yards is child’s play to you. And what does it matter where the apple is—whether it is on a tree or on a boy's head? It is an apple just the same. ”

“ People poured in from villages for miles around to look at the up-to-date chicken farm. It was a pleasing and instructive spectacle to see Ukridge, in a pink shirt without a collar, and very dirty flannel trousers, lecturing to the intelligent natives on the breeding of fowls. They used to go away with the dazed air of men who have heard strange matters, and Ukridge, unexhausted, would turn to interview the next batch. ”

“ The death of Gessler was a signal to the Swiss to rise in revolt, and soon the whole country was up in arms against the Austrians. It had been chiefly the fear of the Governor that had prevented a rising before. It had been brewing for a long time. The people had been bound by a solemn oath to drive the enemy out of the country. All through Switzerland preparations for a revolution were going on, and nobles and peasants had united. ”