Saki Quotes

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

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

Convincing all nations in the civilized world to agree that any investments into these corporations should be tax-free was not an easy task. Tea with the Queen didn’t quite cut it. Saki with the Japanese Prime Minister was pleasant, but not quite enough. We had to offer major trade concessions to our partner nations to bring them to the negotiating table. In retrospect, it was a small price to pay. The talks earned me the title of “The Great Negotiator.” I didn't mind.

Find yourself a cup of tea, the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

Romance at short notice was her specialty.

If people but knew their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free from any grudge against the religion of others.

Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

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

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.

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.

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

To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.

Selfishness keeps man blind through life.

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

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

For the value of everything exists for man only so long as he does not understand it. When he has fully understood, the value is lost, be it the lowest thing or the highest thing.

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

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.

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

Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?

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

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

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.

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

I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.

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

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

Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.

Pieej pie krāsns durtiņām tuvu, kad uguns kuras. Ej tā, lai neierauj ugunī, un saki :"Man jānoturas!

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.

The young have aspirations that never comes 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 patient with them. But one never is.

addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.

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

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

And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.

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. 

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.

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

No one seems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours now and then.

H. H. Munro. Also known as Saki. The story is called ‘The Open Window.’ Look it up. When it comes to the art of creating bullshit on the spur of the moment, it’s very instructive.

saki, kur sāp. papūtīšu bet varbūt nesaki vis lai nezinātu kur sist

101 And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass, And in your joyous errand reach the spot Where I made One - turn down an empty Glass!

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")

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.

Pluralism is a merciful narcotic.

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. 

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

Your parents are your parents. You are you.

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

Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.

It is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.

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.

What do you think of human intelligence?" asked Mavis Pellington lamely. "Of whose intelligence in particular?" asked Tobermory coldly. "Oh, well, mine for instance," said Mavis with a feeble laugh. "You put me in an embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. "When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. You know, the one they call 'The Envy of Sisyphus,' because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

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

With due deference to an esteemed lyrical authority one may safely say that a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is anticipating unhappier things.

I can remember a menu long after I've forgotten the hostess that accompanied it.

It was one of those exuberant peaches that meet you halfway, so to speak, and are all over you in a moment.

I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter.

Imperious and yet forlorn,. Came through the silence of the trees,. The echoes of a golden horn,. Calling to distances.

… one of those people who would be enormously improved by death. —Saki

I can't pick up a cat on a whim or out of sympathy. What if I can't take care of him 'til the end? What if I'm not confident enough to stay with him forever? I can't hold a lonely cat.

It was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning that had been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort of afternoon that impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition of the art of moderation.

Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window -

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.

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'.

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.

A moral é de modo geral uma expressão da história e da geografia. Qualquer coisa vale, mas não em toda parte. Os hindus não podem beber, mas têm várias mulheres, os cristãos podem se embriagar quantas vezes quiserem, mas estão presos, como disse Saki, "ao costume ocidental de uma mulher e quase nenhuma amante". Nos EUA, em 1933 era errado brindar o aniversário de Washington, mas em 1934 era um gesto patriótico. Nas ilhas Fiji, na década de 1830, até o canibalismo era socialmente aceitável, separando-se o cérebro, como um petisco, para as mulheres.

Tie neišmanėliai girs taisyklingus bruožus, liauną figūrą, nepriekaištingą krūtinę. O jos akys, šnekės jie, esančios kaip smaragdai, o dantys - kaip perlai, o rankos ir kojos glotnios kaip dramblio kaulas - ir dar kokių tik neprigalvos idiotiškų palyginimų. Ir išrinks ją Jazminų Karaliene, tapys paiki dailininkai, visi vėpsos į jos portretą ir sakys, kad ji - gražiausia Prancūzijos moteris. Jaunikaičiai ištisas naktis bruzgins mandoliną ir stūgaus po jos langu... stori turtingi seniai susmukdami ant kelių prieš mergaitės tėvą maldaus jos rankos... o visokio amžiaus moterys dūsaus ją regėdamos ir sapnuos, kad bent vieną dieną atrodo taip viliojančiai kaip ji. Ir niekas nesupras, kad ne jos išvaizda iš tikrųjų juos užvaldė, ne jos tariamai nepriekaištingas išorinis grožis, o tik su niekuo nepalyginamas karališkas kvapas!

To say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion,

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

Tampoco sugería su aspecto exterior la especie de hombre al que las mujeres están dispuestas a perdonarle un abundante grado de deficiencia mental.

The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. 

You poor little strawberry-leafed nonentity.

if he had an equal in his profession he had never acknowledged the fact.

There are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream," he quoted, "but I'm not sure," he added, "that it's not the best way.

They(women) go shopping as assiduously as bees go flower-visiting.

nothing seemed to belong definitely to anywhere; even the gates were not necessarily to be found on their hinges.

He will not live much longer"But the doctor did not know about his imagination. In hes lonely, loveless world his imagination was the only thing that kept him alive.

But the doctor did not know about his imagination. In his lonely, loveless world imagination was the only thing that kept him alive.

When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands," quoted Clovis to himself.

The gipsies were equally unobtrusive over their missing offspring; I don’t suppose in large encampments they really know to a child or two how many they’ve got.

von Kwarl had made up his mind to accept the world as it was, and to that philosophical resolution, steadfastly adhered to, he attributed his excellent digestion and his unruffled happiness. 

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. 

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.

Who are those depressed-looking young women who have just gone by?" asked the Baroness; "they have the air of people who have bowed to destiny and are not quite sure whether the salute will be returned.

The soul's true happiness lies in experiencing the inner joy, and it will never be fully satisfied with outer, seeming pleasures. Its connection is with God, and nothing short of perfection will ever satisfy it.

I wonder why it is that scandal seems so much worse under a roof," observed Clovis; "I've always regarded it as a proof of the superior delicacy of the cat tribe that it conducts most of its scandals above the slates.

she had been the eldest sister of a large family of self-indulgent children, and her particular form of indulgence had consisted in openly disapproving of the foibles of the others. Unfortunately the hobby had grown up with her.

For a boy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formed the social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not be very crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change and adventure.

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.

The little stone Saint and the Goblin got on very well together, though they looked at most things from different points of view. The Saint was a philanthropist in an old fashioned way; he thought the world, as he saw it, was good, but might be improved. In particular he pitied the church mice, who were miserably poor. The Goblin, on the other hand, was of opinion that the world, as he knew it, was bad, but had better be let alone. It was the function of the church mice to be poor.

This being human is a guest-house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. I recite it aloud three

Elžbieta, be pavardės, niekeno žmona, dabar sprendė ar maloningai priims jį į savo valdą po nakties dangum, ir užminė norą : jeigu jis ką sakys, jei ištars nors žodį, ji lieps jam eiti iš kur atėjus, o jei ne – gal ir įsileis. Bet Jonas Motiejus stobėjo ai už nugaros ir į ją žiūrėjo, ir paskui žiūrėjo jai į kaklą, paskui pažiūrėjo į žemę, ir ji taip gerai jį per tiek metų pažino, kad buvo tikra : jis žiūri į žemę todėl, jog dabar galvoja apie tai, jog ji nesušaltų užpakalio, ir svarsto, ar tyliai sulanksčius nepakišti jai savo žipono, bet ne, to nepadarė; ir taip, jie vis dar tylėjo. Ir todėl ji į jį pasisuko ir išdidžiai nusišypsojo, ir įpylė jam taurę vyno ir maloningai linktelėjo jam sėsti šalia.

People say, 'Let us enjoy ourselves and be happy; there is plenty of sorrow in the world without choosing to mourn,' and they strive after happiness in whatever way they can. But these passing and momentary joys do not give lasting happiness, and the people who pursue them are either asleep or dead. The soul's true happiness lies in experiencing the inner joy, and it will never be fully satisfied with outer seeming pleasures. Its connection is with God, and nothing short of perfection will ever satisfy it. ... Everybody has an ideal in life, and that ideal is the religion of his soul, and coming short of that ideal is what we term sin. The thoughtful and serious-minded man repents in tears for his shortcomings, and thus proves himself to be alive, while the shallow man is angry at his fall, and is ready to blame those who seem to him to have caused it.