Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

— Jerome K. Jerome

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

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

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

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

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

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

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

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We drink one another's health and spoil our own.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature.

— Jerome K. Jerome

The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.

— Jerome K. Jerome

I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished—not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We give another twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and obtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniest piece of new glass to the toy.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.

— Jerome K. Jerome

The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree can bear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note in music as expect an original idea from a human brain. One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth, and leave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because they do not get it.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be".

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

We drink one another's health and spoil our own.

— Jerome K. Jerome

I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

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

— Jerome K. Jerome

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

Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.

— Jerome K. Jerome

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

— Jerome K. Jerome