Saki (1870 – 1916)
Pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.
Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess's salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II.
Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage.
And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night.
The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them.
The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.
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.
Madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the bill.
You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistress.
Mrs. Troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who has detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte.
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.
The death of John Pennington had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than ever, and the Park had receded even from her notepaper, where it had long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.
I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.
I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient, but it seems I asked too much of fate.
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.
Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal the fact.
The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time.
I might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got.