Quotes by Saki

“I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano...”

“It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.”

“I am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyám. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his ag...”

“To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to Heaven prematurely.”

“You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.”

“To have reached thirty, said Reginald, is to have failed in life.”

“The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other.”

“Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth...”

“Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?”

“And the sleeper, eye unlidding,Heard a voice for ever biddingMuch farewell to Dolly Gray;Turning weary on his truckle-Bed he heard the honey-suckleLauded in apiarian lay.”

“Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration. It follows that they ne...”

“And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise earl...”

“I always say beauty is only sin deep.”

“I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly.”

“And they tried to rag me in the smoking room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it....”

“Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.”

“The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time.”

“Children are given us to discourage our better emotions.”

“Madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the bill.”

“The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.”