I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat.
P. G. WodehouseRead
It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the tension between understanding an idea and the anxiety of applying it in reality.
This quote from P. G. Wodehouse reflects the common struggle of individuals who can appreciate theoretical concepts yet feel apprehensive about their practical implementation. By referencing Hamlet, Wodehouse suggests that this feeling of indecision and nervousness is universal, extending through time and literature, reminding us that even great thinkers and characters faced similar doubts when confronting the application of their ideas.
Themes
IdeaPrincipleAnxietyImplementationTheoryPractice
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speech about overcoming fear when starting a new project.
More from P. G. Wodehouse
All quotes →While not exactly disgruntled, he was far from feeling gruntled. He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
P. G. WodehouseRead
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season
P. G. WodehouseRead
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
P. G. WodehouseRead
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
P. G. WodehouseRead
It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.
P. G. WodehouseRead
Similar quotes
The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
Ralph EllisonRead
True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right.
Brigham YoungRead
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.
Graham GreeneRead
Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.
Washington IrvingRead
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.
Mark TwainRead
That man is truly humble who neither claims any personal merit in the sight of God, nor proudly despises brethren, or aims at being thought superior to them, but reckons it enough that he is one of the members of Christ, and desires nothing more than that the Head alone should be exalted.
John CalvinRead