Quotes by "Jerome K. Jerome"

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

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.

I want a house that has gotten over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

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

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.

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.

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.

How good one feels when one is full -- how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! 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.

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

(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.

We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.

Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.