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.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Shame, Blame
Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Togetherness, The Poor, Poverty
There is nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Buddhism
Children with Hyacinth’s temperament don’t know better as they grow older; they merely know more.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Knowledge
Hors d’oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one’s childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like—and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d’oeuvres.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Food, Eating
Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Children
No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Wealth, Riches
I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Money
No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Atheism
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: One liners, Lies, Understanding, Explanation, Honesty
When people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of living expand in proportion, while their present-giving instincts often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier days. Something showy and not-too-expensive in a shop is their only conception of the ideal gift.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Charity, Giving
The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Friends and Friendship
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.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Youth, Aspirations, Memory
It’s no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Behavior, Manners
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: People
The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Service, Servants
You needn’t tell me that a man who doesn’t love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Food, Eating
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Politicians, Politics
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Sin
Great Socialist statesmen aren’t made, they’re still-born.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Socialism, Communism
He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Self-Pity, Happiness, Hedonism
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.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Christians, Christianity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
V. S. Pritchett British Short Story Writer
William H. Gass American Short Story Writer
Eudora Welty American Short Story Writer
Anton Chekhov Russian Short Story Writer
Damon Runyon American Writer, Journalist
Andre Dubus American Short Story Writer
Katherine Mansfield British Author
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell Founder of the Boy Scouts
Rudyard Kipling British Children’s Books Writer
Winston Churchill British Head of State