Saki

"All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's. A few gifted individuals manage to do both."

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."

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

"Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wondering look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visible to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things …"

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

"And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early t…"

"It occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score."

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