Frasi di Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

pagina 7

“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?”

“I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course.”

“As is so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him who were fat, would have taken to him at once. He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht.”

“I suppose this was really the moment for embarking upon an impassioned defence of Boko, stressing his admirable qualities. Not being able to think of any, however, I remained silent.”

“Aunt Agatha is like an elephant—not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.”

“He resembled a minor prophet who had been hit behind the ear with a stuffed eel-skin.”

“I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.”

“He then gave a hideous laugh and added that, if anybody was interested in his plans, he was going to join the Foreign Legion, that cohort of the damned in which broken men may toil and die and dying, forget. ‘Beau Widgeon?’ said the Egg, impressed. ‘What ho!”

“The fellow with a face rather like a walnut.”

“Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well.”

“When news had reached me through well-informed channels that my Aunt Agatha for many years a widow, or derelict, as I believed it is called, was about to take another pop at matrimony, my first emotion, as was natural in the circumstances, had been a gentle pity for the unfortunate goop slated to step up the aisle with her - she, as you are aware, being my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon.”

“There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots.”

“So was victory turned into defeat, and Billy's jaw became squarer and his eye more full of the light of battle than ever.”

“I wouldn't have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.”

“There are girls, few perhaps but to be found if one searches carefully, who when their advice is ignored and disaster ensues, do not say "I told you so."”

“This done, he felt a little—not much, but a little—better. Before, he would have gladly murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.”

“Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.”

“I charged into something which might have been a tree, but was not--being, in point of fact, Jeeves.”

“I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.”

“I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves.”

“I started back to the house, and in the drive I met Jeeves. He was at the wheel of Stiffy's car. Beside him, looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin, was the dog Bartholomew.”

“The stationmaster’s whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass.”

“It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.”

“Whenever I meet Ukridge’s Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and—what is more—of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave.”

“Besides, isn't there something in the book of rules about a man may not marry his cousin? Or am I thinking of grandmothers?”

“Do you know,’ said a thoughtful Bean, ‘I’ll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved were placed end to end—not that I suppose one could do it—they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.’
‘Further than that,’ said the Egg. ‘Some of them were pretty tall.”

“A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters.”

“You know your Shelley, Bertie!’
‘Oh, am I?”

“Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words.”

“She cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.”