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Jerome K. Jerome

68 quotes

“It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right — except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Men on the Bummel (1900)
“Nothing—so it seems to me...is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. … The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Passing of the Third Floor Back" (1908)
“I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: They and I (1909), Ch. 2
“It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once...No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not hate, nor grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like we did in our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide, and we quaff success without intoxication.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but a sapless stump”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners that you study only books. Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah, lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a wild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after-sorrows. When you have lost her—when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror, even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and cheese—ay, and even kisses—do not seem the only things worth striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome, we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times in the dimness his groping hands touch God's.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his friends round about to sneer him. Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There have been a good many funny things said and written about hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty — to the poor.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men — more so, if possible.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds, too. There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century, and the golden casket that they guard is not so easy to win as it appears in the story-books.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she begins to smile upon you.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems so sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted human atoms, they are not children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared and withered, their baby laughter cracked and hoarse.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Look even at Pussy Sobersides, with her dull, sleepy glance, her grave, slow walk, and dignified, prudish airs; who could ever think that once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scampering, head-over-heels, mad little firework that we call a kitten? What marvelous vitality a kitten has. It is really something very beautiful the way life bubbles over in the little creatures. They rush about, and mew, and spring; dance on their hind legs, embrace everything with their front ones, roll over and over, lie on their backs and kick. They don't know what to do with themselves, they are so full of life.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All great literary men are shy. I am myself, though I am told it is hardly noticeable. I am glad it is not. It used to be extremely prominent at one time, and was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to every one about me—my lady friends especially complained most bitterly about it. A shy man's lot is not a happy one. The men dislike him, the women despise him, and he dislikes and despises himself. Use brings him no relief, and there is no cure for him except time.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A poor gasping, blushing creature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painful sight to every one, and if it cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes and hangs itself the better.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness. I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is constant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face, and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quite enough for him.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government — always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it is stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it would make up its mind...We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Swearing relieves the feelings—that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Foolish people — when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say — people who ought to be ashamed of themselves do — that the consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to the human heart that religion is powerless to bestow. I am afraid these cynical persons are sometimes correct.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We drink one another's health and spoil our own.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn’t care for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number of weeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature.”
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source