Ben Schott > Quotes

“Properly cared for, a Savile Row suit can be handed down the generations—like gout.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“I'm a firm believer in thinking inside the box. The first thing I do when approaching a new project is to give myself rigid guidelines and precise limits. That's how I begin to think. If I were told that I could create anything in any medium, using any amount of space and any amount of time, I'd stand in a field and scream.”
― Ben Schott

“There are, of course, three ways to hide behind a sofa.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Such diplomacy is not to be sneezed at, for the suit is a window to the soul: lightweight cotton when cash is tight, Italian cashmere when an inheritance lands; waistlines drawn in during illness or anxiety, and let out at times of excess. Weddings, funerals, christenings, and court appearances—all of life's landmarks are sanctified, quietly and confidentially, by one's tailor.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“[...]First things first, Mr. Wooster: how did our postman costume suit your friend?'
'Almost too well. People insisted on handling him parcels, and he was bitten by more than one dog.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“[...]only a fool attempts honesty with a man in love. In my experience, the blunter one is enumerating the deficiencies of an affianced, the more likely that marriage becomes - placing you on the wrong side of a wronged wife until divorce do them part.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“The only acceptable way to stand out, as far as valets and dog shows are concerned, is to combine sartorial purity (‘true to pedigree’) with fastidious uniformity (‘best in breed’).”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“- Were you never a child?
- Briefly, sir. The predicament proved unavoidable.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“As Sherlock Holmes once observed: When you've excluded the inevitable, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be lunch.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“So what do you need me to do?’ ‘For now, absolutely nothing.’ ‘I think I can manage that. For centuries we Woosters have done absolutely nothing under much more trying conditions.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“[...] persons who claim mystical powers often enjoy remarkably ambidextrous moralities when presented with opportunities for enrichment.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“That's the problem with educating girls' said Spode, bitterly, 'they never stop resorting to fact.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“Madeline Bassett is the Charybdis to Florence Craye’s Scylla. Just as deadly to the seafaring community, but offering a subtly different form of death by drowning. Whereas Florence dashes you on the rocks of her intellectual disapproval, Madeline engulfs you in a sentimental whirlpool of froth.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“When it comes to clothing, gentlemen’s personal gentlemen have a comprehensive vocabulary of euphemisms. ‘Bold’ translates as ‘ostentatious’, ‘lively’ as ‘clown-like’, and ‘striking’ as ‘obscene’.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“The Quarrelsome Crab is a curious club, which, over the years, has niftily perfected the art of reincarnation. Its origins are lost in the pea-soupers of time, but I first joined the place when it sailed under the flag of The bitter Pill. Almost immediately it mutated into The Feverish Cheese, before becoming The Frozen Limit, The Startled Shrimp, The Mottled Oyster, and then, very briefly, The Last Gasp....There was a brief attempt to revive the The Frozen Limit when The Last Gasp was raided, but the name had been nabbed by one of Soho's more unyielding criminal gangs. And so The Quarrelsome Crab was born—for how long, though, was anyone's guess.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“Every so often, life presents a dilemma upon which the manuals of etiquette are woefully silent, and this was a snorter: whether it demonstrates better breeding to choke oneself into a frothy stupor or to expectorate one’s dry Martini across four foot of well-polished bar, and six-foot-two of well-regarded barman.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“Moister than an oyster, Monty.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Timbale”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“I’ve given him teddy bears, daisy chains, and heaps of adorable billikens, but I wonder if I’m missing the masculine angle.’ ‘It sounds as if you might be.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“- But tell me, who was that queer cove with the spool of twine and the German accent?
- The Austrian accent? Jeeves gently corrected. I may be mistaken, sir, but I think that was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- So not an unhinged gardener?
- Dr Wittgenstein is the author of the Tractatus.
- A short history of farm machinery in the Ukraine?
- The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sir, concerns itself with a picture theory of language.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“- But tell me, who was that queer cove with the spool of twine and the German accent?
- The Austrian accent? Jeeves gently corrected. I may be mistaken, sir, but I think that was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- So not an unhinged gardener?
- Dr Wittgenstein is the author of the Tractatus.
- A short history of farm machinery in the Ukraine?
- The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sir, concerns itself with a picture theory of language.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“the pre-lunch diary is unblemished by obligation,”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“The seventh Earl of Sidcup is a sore for sighted eyes. It’s as if evolution took a wrong turn, got stuck in a cul-de-sac, and just threw in the sponge.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Aunts, I have learned, never admit defeat. In the face of overwhelming forces, or incontestable facts, they simply change tack. Had Napoleon been an aunt, he would never have done anything so vulgar as to ‘retreat’ from Moscow. Rather, he would have framed his return to Paris casually as a question of clothing and etiquette, noting it was unseasonably cold for October and declaring that–like fish and family–armies of invasion go off after three days.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“These sprouts are uneatable,' complained Lord Pallot. 'Why are sprouts always uneatable? Why do they plant them, pick them, cook them, and serve them if they are going to be uneatable? What, in other words, is the point of Brussels sprouts?”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“It’s love, Bertie, but love unrequited. Although she is the apple of my eye, to her I am no more than a pip. I need”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Actually, sir, Mr Fink-Nottle was asking after you. He’s gone up to the bar.’ ‘Gussie, Gussie, Gussie,’ I sang to myself while striding to the oasis, ‘a guinea to a gooseberry the booby’s in a pickle.’ ‘Bertie, I’m in a pickle.’ ‘What-ho, Gussie. I had a sort of feeling you might be.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

“Mr Wooster, you will have heard of the Official Secrets Act…?’ ‘Er–no.’ ‘Really?’ He had evidently assumed his question to be rhetorical, and was fairly startled by my lacuna. ‘Just goes to prove how effective it is, what?”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Aunt logic is an immovable object; aunts themselves an unstoppable force.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Don't these spiritual johnnies swear some kind of hypocritic oath?!”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith