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
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 attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Smoking
Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Life
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, Opportunities, Past and Present
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
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
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
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
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
—Jerome K. Jerome
Topics: Idleness, One liners
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
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: The Poor, Poverty
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
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
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
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- E. F. Benson English Novelist, Biographer
- Charles Dickens English Novelist
- Wilkie Collins English Novelist, Playwright
- Laurence Housman English Novelist, Dramatist
- Charles Reade British Author
- Edward Lear English Humorist, Illustrator
- Douglas Adams British Author
- Hanif Kureishi British Novelist, Screenwriter
- Robert Hugh Benson English Author, Clergyman
- Ben Elton English Comedian, Writer
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