Saki

"It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country."

"Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two."

"We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart."

"Put that bloody cigarette out!"

"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."

"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 FitzGeralds notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think."

"To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to Heaven prematurely."

"To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed in life."

"You cant expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigals return."

"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."

"Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration. 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."

"Im living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."