Quotes from Saki

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

The young man turned to him with a disarming candour which instantly put him on his guard.

Oysters are more beautiful than any religion . . . there's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

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.

Women and elephants never forget an injury.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

I hate babies. They're so human—they remind one of monkeys.

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

The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.

I might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got.

Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.

Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more.

Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.

People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die.

Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

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

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

The clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.

Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

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