Saki (1870 – 1916)
Pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.
"Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also."
"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett."
Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.
"I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," [Clovis] 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."
I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages.
The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other.
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.
Women and elephants never forget an injury.
And they tried to rag me in the smoking room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it. So I got up the next morning at early dawn – I know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and the grass looked as if it had been left out all night.
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.
You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect.
Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.