Skip to content

Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.

— Saki The Square Egg (1924)

Another quote →

Topics

Pets

More quotes by Saki

Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

Reginald (1904)

Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Reginald (1904)

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.

Reginald (1904)

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 (1904)

The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time.

Reginald (1904)

All Saki quotes →

You may also like

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Saki (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.