Humorous Quotes from
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
By Jerome K Jerome

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow.

The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at wisdom's font for nine guineas a term--no extras--used to say he never knew a boy who could do less work in more time.

Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter--it is a gift. Few possess it.

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.

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

I felt my mind giving way under it (boredom). It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far.

A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach.

The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself.

Besides, sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for our humor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief.

One becomes used to being hard up, as one becomes used to everything else, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time.

I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.

Each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves.

I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock, who fancied the sun got up every morning to hear him crow.

Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company. Even mere good people are rather depressing.

Vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels.

Those fine, sturdy John Bulls who "hate flattery, sir," "Never let anybody get over me by flattery," etc., etc., are very simply managed. Flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity, and you can do what you like with them.

Day and night you can hear the quick tramp of the myriad feet--some running, some walking, some halting and lame; but all hastening, all eager in the feverish race, all straining life and limb and heart and soul to reach the ever-receding horizon of success.

Why, there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patter-songs than in half the biographical novels ever written.

Fortune is, indeed, as the ancients painted her, very like a woman--not quite so unreasonable and inconsistent, but nearly so.

I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.

The weather is like the government--always in the wrong.

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.

If anything more in the cat or dog line comes fooling about me this morning, it had better bring its own funeral contractor with it.

The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.

I do not like speaking about myself, as may have been noticed, but in the cause of humanity I on this occasion will do so.

It is a pretty theory, but, like most generally accepted theories, mere nonsense.

Give an average baby a fair chance, and if it doesn't do something it oughtn't to a doctor should be called in at once.

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.

It's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before.

"Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday.

From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now.

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