The Complete Saki Quotes

“Find yourself a cup of tea,
the teapot is behind you.
Now tell me about
hundreds of things.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki

“The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.”
― Saki, The Complete 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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki

“Mother, may I go and maffick,
Tear around and hinder traffic?”
― H.H. Munro, The Complete Saki

“I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care. ”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“it was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“That’s what the mother of the gardener’s boy said,” remarked Teresa; “she wanted me to have it destroyed, but I pointed out to her that she had eleven children and I had only one elk. ”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold weather at a time when coal was so dear! So distressing for the poor.” “Someone has observed that Providence is always on the side of the big dividends,” remarked Reginald.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki

“She was one of those who shape their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki

“It is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

“Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

“The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded.  He read a list of box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan.  Fortunately no one noticed the mistake.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“It is the golden rule of all religions that no one should really live up to their precepts; when a man observes the principles of his religion too exactly he is in immediate danger of founding a new sect.”
― Saki, Complete Works Of Saki

“Imperious and yet forlorn,. Came through the silence of the trees,. The echoes of a golden horn,. Calling to distances.”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

“I wonder,” said Reginald, “if you have ever walked down the Embankment on a winter night?” “Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?” “I didn’t; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, practised in a world where everything is based on competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. The young ravens cry for food.” “And are fed.” “Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed upon.”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

“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, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“I have learned one thing in life,” continued the young man, “and that is that peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when He takes us into His rest. Beat your sword into a ploughshare if you like, but beat your enemy into smithereens first.”
― Saki, Complete Works Of Saki

“For all they knew or cared we might be frantically embedded in the belief that all poetry begins and ends with John Masefield,”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

“On the stream banks moorhens walked with jerky confident steps, in the easy boldness of those who had a couple of other elements at their disposal in an emergency; more timorous partridges raced away from the apparition of the train, looking all leg and neck, like little forest elves fleeing from human encounter.”
― Saki, Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)