Saki Quotes

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

— Saki

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

— Saki

“Romance at short notice was her specialty.”

— Saki

“Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.”

— Saki

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

— Saki

Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.

— Saki

“I'm living so far beyond my means that we may almost be said to be living apart.”

— Saki

I hate posterity - it's so fond of having the last word.

— Saki

“The censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories.”

— Saki

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he 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

“And the vagueness of his alarm added to its terrors; when once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations its possibilities become practically limitless.”

— Saki

“Miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very practical sway.”

— Saki

“There is no easy in the world neither hard everything is the same in a way.”

— Saki

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

— Saki

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

— Saki

Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.

— Saki

“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

“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

— Saki

“There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.”

— Saki

“It was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect.”

— Saki

“Behind his careful political flippancy and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn him into one of the brilliant failures of his day.”

— Saki

“I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice.
'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.' ("Laura")”

— Saki

Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.

— Saki

“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

“Neither man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not being talkative.  That is why from time to time they talked.”

— Saki

“It was the happiest Christmas Eve he had ever spent. To quote his own words, he had a rotten Christmas.”

— Saki

“Well in those parts (upcountry India) they have were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our discarded practices; it doesn't seem respectful to our mental and moral position.”

— Saki

I did it-I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops' garden-party against his will.
We all make mistakes occasionally.

— Saki

And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:
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

“Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth telling well.”

— Saki

The fact of a leading organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a mistake.

— Saki

“Laurence was an artist-chap, just that and nothing more, though you might make it sound more important by calling him an animal painter;”

— Saki

“She looks as if she might have created the world in six days and destroyed it on the seventh.”

— Saki

Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St Paul were living now they would pester him to write an Epistle to the Esquimaux, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to the Ephesians.

— Saki

Pluralism is a merciful narcotic.

— Saki

“Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man, who went into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other people might go into half-mourning.”

— Saki

When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care.

— Saki

“Even the hooligan was probably invented in China centuries before we thought of him.”

— Saki

“With us," said Reginald, "a Cabinet usually gets the credit of being depraved and worthless beyond the bounds of human conception by the time it has been in office about four years.”

— Saki

“This story has no moral. If it points out an evil at any rate it suggests no remedy.”

— Saki

“The English have a proverb, 'Conscience makes cowboys of us all'.”

— Saki

“She was one of those who shape their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them.”

— Saki

“The Government of the day, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision.”

— Saki

“There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe. That is really the crying need of our modern civilisation. Just think how jolly it would be if a recognised day were set apart for the paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one could lay oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured list of 'people who must not be let off'.”

— Saki

“I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being agreed with.”

— Saki

“He nurse the illusion that he is one of the lost arms of the Venus de Milo, and hopes that the French Government may be persuaded to buy him.”

— Saki

In the same way, 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

“There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite steady.  Should never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer's widow and set up as a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; dreadfully immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent player, but still, it showed imagination.  His wife was really to be pitied, because he had been the only person in the house who understood how to manage the cook's temper, and now she has to put "D.V." on her dinner invitations.”

— Saki

“One can discourage too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent geography.”

— Saki

“For he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things ...”

— Saki