Jerome K. Jerome famous quotes

Nothing 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 things longer.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Love #Beautiful #Storm

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

#Love #Inspirational #Life

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Funny #Truth #Lying

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Funny #Humorous #Procrastination

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Success #Work #Stress

Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Happiness #Regret #Opportunity

They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Funny #Dog #Silly

The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Life #Character #Literature

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Happiness #Fake People #Humor

It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will never come back to him again - being wasted in a mere brutish sleep.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Sleep #Men #Priceless

After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Stars #Eye #Wings

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Knowing #Hands #Games

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Weather #Knowing #Want

Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Love #Love Is #Love Is Like

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

#Medicine #Suffering #Disease

We drink [to] one another's health and spoil our own.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Drinking #Health #Drink

The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Government #Weather

I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Sleep #Insomnia #Men

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Dream #Men #Sea

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Inspirational #Time #Shadow

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

#Home #House #Want

He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Friendship #Wise #Dog

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.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Business #People #Doe

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Sweet #Time #Kissing

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Poor #Trifles

Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Life #Wise #Sometimes

There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Clouds #Land #Rainbow

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Watches #Care #Morality

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

#Passion #Thinking #Strange

I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Imagination #Fisherman #Should

Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Children #Mistake #Men

When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is constantly in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Adversity #Men #Wind

I like cats.... When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stoop down and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness and peace.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Cat #Iron #

If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Mean #Fighting #Men

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.... We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Husband #Father #Passion

So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Two #Rivers #Lakes

A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Bulls #Benefits #Institutions

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Revenge #Men #Doe

"Not sure," he retorted; "you call yourself a journalist, and admit there is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!"
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Heaven #Journalism #Not Sure

Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Work #Sleep #Failing

Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Winning #Games #Play

Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Play #Iron #Evil

Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#People #Would Be #Might

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..
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Hands #Rivers #Sailing

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

#Love #Done #Way

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

#Love #Fire #Light

In the future there are going to be no pretty girls, for the simple reason there will be no plain girls against which to contrast them. Of late I have done some systematic reading of ladies papers. The plain girl submits to a course of "treatment." In eighteen months she bursts upon Society an acknowledged beauty.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Beauty #Girl #Reading

Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Falling In Love #Wine #Play

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.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Dog #Humorous #Mirrors

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.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Humorous #Sadness #England

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

#Mother #Baby #Blood

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

#Intelligent #Play #Long

The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Life #Fiction #Facts

All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men - more so, if possible.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Men #Vanity #Vain

Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Nature #Creating #Impossible

A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Women #Heaven #Good Woman

It is no more effort for a man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of habit.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Men #Effort #Saint

A boy's muscles move quicker than his thoughts.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Moving #Boys #Muscles

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

#Want #Goods

I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Lying #Feet #October

Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Voice #People #Silence

We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Men #Weather

Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house-out of place and in the way.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Weather #House #Way

Idling has always been my strong point.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Strong

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Revenge #Men #People

The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Fashion #Dresses #Taste

Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Oil #Too Much #Cheese

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

#Children #Memories #Believe

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.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Mistake #Lying #People

Think of the man who first tried German sausage.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Men #Thinking #Sausage

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

#Country #Thinking #Two

I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.
-- Jerome K. Jerome

#Book #Writing #Age