The Toys of Peace and other papers, by Saki

“It was there, among the gooseberry bushes and beneath the medlar trees, that the temptation to the perpetration of a great literary fraud came to him.”

“War is a cruelly destructive thing.”

“Luitpold Wolkenstein drank his coffee, but the flavour had somehow gone out of it.”

“There floated up to him, through the noise and bustle of the Cathedral world, a faint heart-aching message from the prisoner in the wicker cage far below.”

“‘Children with Hyacinth’s temperament don’t know better as they grow older; they merely know more.’”

“‘Intensive bear-gardening was Sir Richard’s description of the whole affair, and I don’t think he exaggerated.’”

“‘I’m afraid I lost touch with the audience rather over that remark,’ said the Sheep afterwards.”

“‘It’s too large to be ignored altogether and treated as a yard, and it’s too small to keep giraffes in.’”

“This particular scion was known by the ignominious and expressive label of Wilfrid the Snatcher.”

“‘Don’t forget the jewels. They are a detail, but details interest me.’”

“They were the sort of toys that a tired shop-assistant displays and explains at Christmas time to exclamatory parents and bored, silent children.”

“Now, the man of pigments was going to be shown a real picture, a living model of strength and comeliness."

“There are occasions when one must take one’s Fate in one’s hands. Rex took the lamp in his.”

“‘We are just so many animals stuck down on a Mappin terrace…’"

“‘I sometimes think these garden-parties are a mistake.’"

“‘A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without quinine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Mellowkents in his kit-bag.’"

“‘The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, in a volcanic sense.’"

“‘In the process of recapture the birds learned a quantity of additional language which unfitted them for further service in the Suffragette cause.’"

“‘And may the Lord have mercy on the poll...’"

“‘We might be living in the Arabian Nights,’ said Miss Fritten, excitedly."

“A man stood one winter night watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within range of his vision, and, later, of his rifle."

“Never, in any novel that she had read, had a defenceless young woman been confronted with a situation like this."

“In the course of half an hour or so everything that it was permissible to say about Bertie had been said some dozens of times."

“Bread and Butter wins! Good old Bread and Butter."

“Beast!"

“… any one will admit that it was an embarrassing predicament to have your only available guest-room occupied by a leopard…"

“… all that Lena will find when she comes home late in the afternoon will be a placidly defunct Louis."

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

“He got a message one day telling him that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the country."

“If one’s soul was really enslaved at one’s mistress’s feet how could one talk coherently about weakened tea?"

“If you say things like that, quite loud, in a Tube lift, they always sound like epigrams."

“Once back at the Louvre and the girls are mine!"

“I have always looked forward to the romance of a European war…” A portrait of Saki, his beliefs and his attitude to World War I, by his friend Rothay Reynolds.