Life & Wisdom Quote by P. G. Wodehouse

"He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!""

P. G. Wodehouse, Writer

About this Quote

Wodehouse lands the insult with the elegance of a souffled pillow: soft, buoyant, and somehow devastating. “Poured into his clothes” turns a human body into a liquid mishap, a domestic accident you can picture in a second. Then the kicker - “forgotten to say ‘when!’” - borrows the ritual of a bartender or a soda fountain operator, that tiny social cue that keeps indulgence from becoming excess. The comedy is in the civility: the speaker isn’t condemning fatness as a moral failure so much as diagnosing a failure of timing, of stopping at the proper moment. That’s Wodehouse’s specialty, making judgment sound like etiquette.

The line also shows how his world works. Wodehouse’s characters live in a universe where surfaces matter, and where appearance is a form of social currency. Describing someone as “tubby” isn’t just body commentary; it’s a shorthand for a certain type: complacent, comfortable, faintly ridiculous, maybe insulated from consequence. The clothes aren’t merely ill-fitting; they’re a stage set that can’t contain the actor. That mismatch between body and costume is the engine of farce: identity slipping, dignity ballooning, the social mask strained at the seams.

Underneath the wit is a class-coded wink. Only a milieu obsessed with tailoring, lunch, and small humiliations could produce a metaphor that treats overeating like overpouring. Wodehouse makes cruelty palatable by aerating it with absurd imagery, inviting us to laugh before we’ve even decided whether we should.

Quote Details

Topic	Witty One-Liners
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by G. Wodehouse Add to List

About the Author

P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse (October 15, 1881 - February 14, 1975) was a Writer from England.

23 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when""

P. G. Wodehouse, Writer

P. G. Wodehouse

"Richard was in heavy, heavy costume, he could hardly sit, you know, and I turned up and they put me in two layers of silk, so I played him much lighter - you know, floating around in a pair of slippers, a bit of a hippy"

Michael Gambon, Actor

"He looked like such a Republican. He dressed like Pee-Wee Herman. But had I known what he had done when I was reading about him, I might have thought different"

Matthew Bright, Director

"He was white and shaken, like a dry martini"

P. G. Wodehouse, Writer

P. G. Wodehouse

"He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly"

Clement Clarke Moore, Writer

"It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character"

Sam Mendes, Director

"I remember that Scott Jacoby was a nice young man"

Kim Hunter, Actress

"Anyway, so what he did was, he spread sheets for 100 yards, and underneath them he'd put things so there were bumps and different levels, and on top he'd put little bushes, and if you didn't look to close, it looked like snow!"

Rod Steiger, Actor

"He obliged Cinderella to sit down, and, putting the slipper to her little foot, he found it went on very easily, and fitted her as if it had been made of wax"

Charles Perrault, Author

"Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady"

Sydney J. Harris, Journalist

Sydney J. Harris

"An office boy in London was the lowest of the low. The office boy was the tea boy. He would be the dog's body: It means someone who would do anything at all. I was quite prepared for that and enjoyed it"

George Carey, Clergyman

"His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow"

Clement Clarke Moore, Writer

"I remember that. I was talking to him and I said how great it would be if actors had a tail because I have animals and a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they're annoyed. You can tell whether they're scared"

Christopher Walken, Actor

"He was doing - Ray was designing the clothes for my mom's show from California. And one of the first appearances I ever made on television was on my mother's show and Ray and Bob did the clothes for that. It has been a long time"

Liza Minnelli, Actress

"I want to be remembered as a guy who gave his all whenever he was on the floor"

Kevin Durant, Athlete

"The poor child was the drudge of the household, and was always in the wrong. He was, however, the most bright and discreet of all the brothers; and if he spoke little, he heard and thought the more"

Charles Perrault, Author

"I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born"

Charlie Chaplin, Actor

Charlie Chaplin

"He put a ring in the toe of a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we opened our stockings and it was there at the bottom of the toe. Then he got down on his knees and he was shaking"

Kyra Sedgwick, Actress

"He worked for the day when all people would be clothed in dignity"

Don King, Celebrity

"He was so tenacious, he defied the distraction of women by refusing to have them in his presence, just as later in life, he denied his blindness by calling for more and more candles"

Kit Williams, Author