The Collected Short Stories of Saki Quotes

“You see the river has overflowed its banks as well."
"Good gracious! Have any lives been lost?"
"Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has already identified three bodies that have floated past the billiard-room window as being the young man she's engaged to. Either she's engaged to a large assortment of the population round here or else she's very careless at identification. Of course it may be the same body coming round again and again in a swirl; I hadn't thought of that.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories

“It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back when you've just sold him," said Mrs. Mullet, "but something must be done, and done at once. The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quiet as a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if they were demented, don't they?"
"The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for sedateness," agreed Clovis.”
― Saki, The Collected Short Stories of Saki

“Lady Susan disapproved of racing. She disapproved of many things; some people went as far as to say that she disapproved of most things. Disapproval was to her was neuralgia and fancy needlework are to many other women.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“Oh, by no means. 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, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“I don't suppose there's another quince tree in the whole parish. And she never makes any quince jam; I think to have a quince tree and not to make quince jam shows strength of character.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“She and Dora are good friends, aren't they? They used to be, as far as I remember."
"They used to be; that's what makes them all the more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one's bosom has been utilized as a snake sanatorium.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“I am sure I don't know what I should do without Florence," admitted Mrs. Troyle; "she understands my hair. I've long ago given trying to do anything with it myself. I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as long is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter. Surely that was the lucheon gong.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki

“Mrs. Cricks had a long family and was therefore licensed in the eyes of her world to have a short temper.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories

“The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle- aged who are really conscious of their limitations—that is why one should be so patient with them. But one never is.”
― Saki, The Complete Short Stories of Saki