Frasi di Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

pagina 9

“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?”

“The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower-bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap.”

“I don’t say I’ve got much of a soul, but, such as it is, I’m perfectly satisfied with the little chap. I don’t want people fooling about with it. ‘Leave it alone,’ I say. ‘Don’t touch it. I like it the way it is.”

“Attila the Hun might have broken off his engagement to her, but nobody except Attila the Hun, and he only on one of his best mornings.”

“I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast.”

“Breakfast had been prepared by the kitchen maid, an indifferent performer who had used the scorched earth policy on the bacon again.”

“Oofy, thinking of the tenner he had given Freddie, writhed like an electric fan.”

“It began to be borne in upon Lord Ickenham that in planning to appeal to the Duke’s better feelings he had omitted to take into his calculations the fact that he might not have any.”

“Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did.”

“Henry glanced hastily at the mirror. Yes, he did look rather old. He must have overdone some of the lines on his forehead. He looked something between a youngish centenarian and a nonagenarian who had seen a good deal of trouble.”

“The village of Market Blandings is one of those sleepy hamlets which modern progress has failed to touch… The church is Norman, and the intelligence of the majority of the natives palaeozoic.”

“She loves this newt-nuzzling blister.”

“[of a character in "The Man Who Gave Up Smoking" who is suffering from a hangover] … the noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort.”

“I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected.”

“His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see he loved like a thousand bricks.”

“I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.”

“She laughed - a solo effort. Nothing in the prevailing circumstances made me feel like turning it into a duet.”

“He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.”

“Stinko, is he?’
'Not perhaps stinko, but certainly effervescent.”

“My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all.”

“"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.”

“I hadn't heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about--the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.”

“I goggled. Her words did not appear to make sense. They seemed the mere aimless vapouring of an aunt who has been sitting out in the sun without a hat.”

“Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it.”

“Nannie Bruce, a tall, gangling light-heavyweight with a suggestion in her appearance of a private in the Grenadiers dressed up to play the title role in Charley’s Aunt, was one of those doggedly faithful retainers who adhere to almost all old families like barnacles to the hulls of ships…She was as much a fixture as the stone lions or the funny smell in the attic.”

“Even at normal times Aunt Dahlia's map tended a little towards the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.”

“On the cue 'five aunts' I had given at the knees a trifle, for the thought of being confronted with such a solid gaggle of aunts, even if those of another, was an unnerving one. Reminding myself that in this life it is not aunts that matter, but the courage that one brings to them, I pulled myself together.”

“The Duke’s moustache was rising and falling like seaweed on an ebb-tide.”

“For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.”

“He uttered a coarse expression which I wouldn't have thought he would have known. It just shows that you can bury yourself in the country and still somehow acquire a vocabulary. No doubt one picks up things from the neighbours -- the vicar, the local doctor, the man who brings the milk, and so on.”