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Saki Quotes


Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.
(1870 - 1916)


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.

Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more.

Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.

Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well.

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
[Sorrow]

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

I always say beauty is only sin deep.

In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse.

It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

Oysters are more beautiful than any religion . . . there's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.
[Religion]

Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so unstintingly of his discovery to the world.

The clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them.

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

The young man turned to him with a disarming candour, which instantly put him on his guard.
[Honesty]

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.