Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927,) fully Jerome Klapka Jerome, was an English writer, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his humor—unsatirical and unintellectual—in such works as the play Three Men in a Boat and the book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow.
Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, Jerome was brought up in London. Leaving school at 14, he was successively a clerk, schoolmaster, reporter, actor, and journalist. He published a volume of humorous writings about the theatre, On the Stage and Off (1885,) and another collection of light essays, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886.)
Jerome’s superbly ridiculous Three Men in a Boat (1889,) the comic story of three young men and their dog who take a rowing holiday up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford, established itself as a humorous classic. In 1892, Jerome and some friends founded the Idler (s.1892.) This comic magazine published work by Bret Harte, Eden Phillpotts, Mark Twain, and W. W. Jacobs, among others.
Jerome’s other works include Three Men on the Bummel (1900,) Paul Kelver (1902,) the morality play The Passing of the Third-Floor Back (1907,) and the autobiography My Life and Times (1926.)
Joseph Connolly wrote Jerome K. Jerome, A Critical Biography (1982.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
Topics: Help, Cooperation
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Smoking
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: One liners, Idleness
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
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
Topics: Home
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
Topics: Perfection
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
Topics: Sadness
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
Topics: Poverty, The Poor
Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Life
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
Topics: Love
Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and to love you, a cat, a dog, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink—for thirst is a dangerous thing.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Wine, Happiness
They 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
Topics: Dogs
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. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous—almost of pedantic—veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
—Jerome K. Jerome
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby “it.”
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Babies
Opportunities fly 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
Topics: Live-now, Past and Present, Opportunities
Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their own way, but we, poor mortals in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Angels
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Stupidity
I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tom foolishness by which we are plagued, this “weather-forecast” fraud is about the most aggravating. It “forecasts” precisely what happened yesterday or the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen today
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Weather
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