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Saki
57 quotes
“We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.”
Saki (1870–1916) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unbearable Bassington (1912), Ch. 13
“I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”
Saki (1870–1916) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unbearable Bassington (1912)
“Put that bloody cigarette out!”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: His last words, before being shot by a German sniper who'd heard the remark, as reported in The Square Egg (1924), p. 102
“Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 might wear just after it had desolated entire villages.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to Heaven prematurely.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed in life.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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, these other things came to him also." "I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book." "Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the sleeper, eye unlidding, Heard a voice for ever bidding Much farewell to Dolly Gray; Turning weary on his truckle- Bed he heard the honey-suckle Lauded in apiarian lay.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I always say beauty is only sin deep.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. So I got up the next morning at early dawn – I know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and the grass looked as if it had been left out all night.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children are given us to discourage our better emotions.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women and elephants never forget an injury.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal the fact.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess's salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Temptations came to him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a neglected butcher-boy who asks for a Christmas box in February for no more hopeful reason than that he didn't get one in December.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistress.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The death of John Pennington had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than ever, and the Park had receded even from her notepaper, where it had long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," [Clovis] resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's. A few gifted individuals manage to do both.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eleanor hated boys, and she would have liked to have whipped this one long and often. It was perhaps the yearning of a woman who had no children of her own.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sredni Vashtar went forth, His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white. His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death. Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours now and then.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mrs. Troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who has detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient, but it seems I asked too much of fate.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Romance at short notice was her speciality.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.”
Saki (1870–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source