Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916,) who wrote under the pseudonym Saki, was a British short-story writer. He is best known for his witty and delightfully whimsical and macabre stories that frequently depict animals as agents seeking revenge against humankind. His works are full of witty sayings and surprise twists.
Born in Akyab, Burma (now Myanmar,) where his father was the inspector-general of police, Munro was raised in Devonshire, England. He returned to Burma after his education and worked in the police force for two years, but left to England after a bad case of malaria.
Munro became a journalist, traveled in the Balkans, Russia, and France as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post. He published The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900,) inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and The Westminster Alice (1902,) a parody of Lewis Carroll‘s work.
Many of Munro’s short stories first appeared in the Westminster Gazette under the pseudonym “Saki,” which he took from the last stanza of Edward Fitzgerald‘s translation, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
In all, Saki published five collections of short stories and wrote three novels and several plays. His first collection of stories was published under the title Reginald (1904.) Other volumes followed: Reginald in Russia (1910,) The Chronicles of Clovis (1911,) and Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914.)
Saki’s stories were usually fewer than 3,000 words because he wrote them for newspapers. They are remembered for his debunking of human snobbery and upper class fatuity in the Edwardian society that he had been raised in. A German sniper killed him in 1916.
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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
It’s no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Manners, Behavior
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: Eating
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
He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Happiness
Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Poverty
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
Topics: Understanding, One liners, Honesty, Lies
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: Aspirations, Youth, Memory
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: Giving, Charity
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)
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