Life & Wisdom Quote by P. G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse turns social etiquette into a con game with a smile. “Never to apologize” isn’t just bad-manners bravado; it’s a satirical diagnosis of how status and shame circulate in polite society. The line works because it treats apology not as morality, but as currency - one that can be refused, demanded, or weaponized depending on who’s holding the ledger.

The “right sort of people” is the tell. Wodehouse’s world is obsessed with sorting: clubmen, aunts, valets, and the anxious middle class all policing the invisible border between “decent” and “not quite.” In that ecosystem, the ideal apology is unnecessary because the truly secure already assume goodwill. They don’t require public kneeling to feel respected. The “wrong sort,” meanwhile, use etiquette as leverage. An apology becomes proof of guilt, a handle to yank, a chance to extract power or social profit. Wodehouse is less interested in ethics than in asymmetry: once you’ve conceded, you’ve handed over narrative control.

There’s also a sly self-protection here. Apologies collapse ambiguity; they finalize the story. Wodehouse suggests that in a world of petty judgments, leaving things unspoken preserves your dignity - and keeps the social machinery from turning your minor mistake into a permanent character flaw.

Context matters: Wodehouse wrote amid rigid class codes where “politeness” often meant hierarchy in a friendly hat. His joke lands because it’s not purely cynical; it’s a survival tip delivered as wit, exposing how even good manners can become a trap when people care more about advantage than understanding.