Frasi di Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

pagina 5

“I gatti, come categoria, non hanno mai completamente superato il complesso di superiorità dovuto al fatto che, nell'antico Egitto, erano adorati come dei.”

“Se le donne comprendessero le proprie responsabilità baderebbero bene a sorridere; tanto bene che probabilmente non lo farebbero.”

“Vi sono nella vita di un uomo momenti in cui il sorriso di una donna può avere risultati importanti quanto quelli di una esplosione di dinamite.”

“C'è qualcosa, nel modo in cui la primavera si manifesta in Inghilterra, che mi ricorda un cucciolo timido che cerca di farsi degli amici. Fa un avventato passo avanti, se la svigna terrorizzato, poi striscia di nuovo in avanti, timoroso, e infine, acquistata fiducia, si avventa con impeto e gioia.”

“Uno dei deliziosi aspetti della primavera inglese è che ha dei giorni, anzi, è quasi del tutto composta di giorni in cui, al tramonto, la temperatura è tale da rendere gradevole un fuoco, anzi persino necessario.”

“Era una bella mattinata. Si è già parlato dell'insensibilità della Natura nei momenti di umana sofferenza; basterà dire che in tale occasione la Natura era più che all'altezza della sua reputazione.”

“Il cammino del progresso ha tolto a Waterloo Station i suoi misteri. Un tempo era stato uno strano, oscuro Paese delle meraviglie in cui Alici spaurite e i loro corrispettivi maschili vagavano disperati, chiedendo informazioni a funzionari altrettanto ignari e sperduti: ora invece era ordinata ed efficiente.”

“Il ritorno del figliol prodigo è quasi proverbialmente legato a effervescenti manifestazioni di gioia da parte dell'intera compagnia con, forse, la sola eccezione del vitello ingrassato.”

“Placida, stolida, assorta nelle sue faccende e titanicamente indifferente a tutto il resto, Londra si avviava al suo tran tran quotidiano. Da Putney a Sloane Square, da Cricklewood a Regent Street, da Sydenham Hill allo Strand, da qualsiasi posto a qualsiasi altro posto, autobus rossi, gialli e marroni passavano rombando di continuo. I vigili vigilavano, gli agenti di borsa badavano alla borsa, i mendicanti mendicavano, i cappellai smerciavano cappelli, i poltroni poltrivano, i venditori di ghette vendevano ghette, i giornalai strillavano l'edizione delle tre dei giornali del pomeriggio, e i colonnelli in pensione sedevano comodamente alle finestre dei club di fronte a Piccadilly e Pall Mall, sognando il pranzo.”

“Il grande segreto dell'eterna giovinezza: far sempre circolare la bottiglia e non andare mai a letto prima delle quattro del mattino.”

“Anna parlava allegramente del più e del meno e io tacevo, perché la mia anima non era che un cumulo di emozioni ribollenti.”

“Di tutte le cure intese a guarire un uomo da riflessioni malinconiche, quella di più immediata efficacia consiste in un colpo violento al plesso solare. Esempi antichi e recenti ce lo dimostrano.”

“Le fandonie, come tu le chiami, mentre io le definisco la modellazione artistica della verità, le fandonie, dunque, sono… come dirò?”

“Well, there it is. That's Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.”

“He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.”

“As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire.”

“She's a sort of human vampire-bat”

“It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.”

“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.”

“In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.”

“A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.”

“One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth”

“Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.”

“Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.”

“Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.”

“Bradbury Fisher shuddered from head to foot, and his legs wobbled like asparagus stalks.”

“Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes.”

“When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.". Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.”

“It was a harsh, rasping voice, in its timbre not unlike a sawmill.”

“…his head emerged cautiously, like that of a snail taking a look around after a thunderstorm.”

“Blizzard was of the fine old school of butlers. His appearance suggested that for fifteen years he had not let a day pass without its pint of port. He radiated port and pop-eyed dignity. He had splay feet and three chins, and when he walked his curving waistcoat preceded him like the advance guard of some royal procession.”

“The modern young man,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.”

“Prismatic is the only word for those frightful tweeds and, oddly enough, the spectacle of them had the effect of steadying my nerves. They gave me the feeling that nothing mattered.”

“She snorted with a sudden violence which twenty-four hours earlier would have unmanned me completely. Even in my present tolerably robust condition, it affected me like one of those gas explosions which slay six.”

“Whenever there is a job to be taken on of a kind calculated to make Humanity shudder, the cry goes up, ‘Let Wooster do it.”

“I agreed the situation was sticky. Indeed, offhand it was difficult to see how it could have been more glutinous.”

“However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck.”

“Jeeves," I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, "what the dickens is all this?”

“Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love.”

“The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite so bad from there.
"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
I hesitated a bit.
"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but -- but it *was* an ugly sort of kid wasn't it, if I remember rightly?"
"As ugly as that?"
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."”

“He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect.”

“We exchanged a meaning glance. Or, rather, two meaning glances, I giving him one and he giving me the other.”