Humorous Quotes from Jerome K Jerome's
Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)

I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished.

Don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.

He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day.

That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

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.

Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do.

The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast.

I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great relief to his mind).

They both sighed, and sat down, with the air of early Christian martyrs trying to make themselves comfortable up against the stake.

We never ought to allow our instincts of justice to degenerate into mere vindictiveness.

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

It takes three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.

People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have had them all. I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can't get it.

When Montmorency (the dog) meets a cat, the whole street knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.

I yearn for the good old days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought of them with a hatchet and a bow and arrows.

George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house.

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.

You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more.

And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger-mark on it.

I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.

You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.

The river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before.

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake.

When he had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.

That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments - I say a thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. I did not count them.

Montmorency had eleven fights on the first day, and fourteen on the second, and evidently thought he had got to heaven.

Take your own boat - unless, of course, you can take someone else's without any possible danger of being found out.

We had come out for a fortnight's enjoyment on the river, and a fortnight's enjoyment on the river we meant to have. If it killed us! well, that would be a sad thing for our friends and relations, but it could not be helped.

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