Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.

Meaning of the quote

When you suddenly become really good at golf or suddenly become very wealthy, it can make you act in strange ways. The success or wealth might change your personality and make you act differently than before, in a worse way. Just like a person who wins a lot of money can start behaving badly, a golfer who starts winning a lot can also start acting differently and in a negative way. The quote suggests that sudden good fortune, whether in sports or in life, can have a negative impact on someone's character.

About P. G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse was an acclaimed English writer and humorist who created beloved characters like Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. He was a prolific author, publishing over 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories during his long career. Despite facing controversy later in life, Wodehouse’s witty and whimsical works have endured as classics of 20th-century literature.

More about the author

More quotes from P. G. Wodehouse

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P. G. Wodehouse

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P. G. Wodehouse

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Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.

P. G. Wodehouse

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He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.

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P. G. Wodehouse

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The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Golf… is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

P. G. Wodehouse

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Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Golf, like measles, should be caught young.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

P. G. Wodehouse

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Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Flowers are happy things.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)