Saki Quotes

British writer

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Saki (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916) was the pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.

Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Hector Hugh Munro

Alternative Names: H. H. Munro

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

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.

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

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

I always say beauty is only sin deep.

Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage.

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.

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.

A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.

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.

Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wondering look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visible to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things of this world with qualities unsuspected by plainer folk – the eyes of a poet or a house agent.

His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect.

Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.

You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.

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.