Hector Hugh Munro Quotes & Sayings

Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic? — Hector Hugh Munro

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it. — Hector Hugh Munro

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve. — Hector Hugh Munro

A relative of mine ... spends his time producing improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. So patronising and irritating to teh Almighty, I should think. — Hector Hugh Munro

You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood. — Hector Hugh Munro

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

Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. — Hector Hugh Munro

Find yourself a cup of tea, the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. — Hector Hugh Munro

Once a female, always a female. Nature is not always infallible but she always abides by her mistakes. — Hector Hugh Munro

All decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's; a few gifted individuals manage to do both. — Hector Hugh Munro

The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside. — Hector Hugh Munro

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. — Hector Hugh Munro

If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot big game. I never know what the big game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our social misfits. — Hector Hugh Munro

To be among people who are smothered in furs when one hasn't any oneself makes one want to break most of the Commandments. — Hector Hugh Munro

Women and elephants never forget an injury. — Hector Hugh Munro

Children are given us to discourage our better emotions. — Hector Hugh Munro

He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep. — Hector Hugh Munro

Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world. — Hector Hugh Munro

Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more. — Hector Hugh Munro

The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends ... — Hector Hugh Munro

We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart. — Hector Hugh Munro

There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets. — Hector Hugh Munro

It was one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing to make oneself at home there. Even respectability seemed to lose some of its virtue when one practiced it in a tent. — Hector Hugh Munro

Why are women so fond of raking up the past? They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you've ceased to wear it. — Hector Hugh Munro

There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden. — Hector Hugh Munro

Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses. — Hector Hugh Munro

People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die. — Hector Hugh Munro

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. — Hector Hugh Munro

A woman who takes her husband about with her everywhere is like a cat that goes on playing with a mouse long after she's killed it. — Hector Hugh Munro

Life is full of its disappointments, and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions. — Hector Hugh Munro

A beautifully constructed borshch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought. — Hector Hugh Munro

I believe I once considerably scandalized her by declaring that clear soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience. — Hector Hugh Munro

By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine. — Hector Hugh Munro

Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well. — Hector Hugh Munro

I hate babies. They're so human. — Hector Hugh Munro

The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them. — Hector Hugh Munro

His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect. — Hector Hugh Munro

The man is a common murderer. A common murderer, possible, but a very uncommon cook. — Hector Hugh Munro

I always say beauty is only sin deep. — Hector Hugh Munro

Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English accent. — Hector Hugh Munro

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. — Hector Hugh Munro

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

It is one of the consolations of middle aged reformers that the good that they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all. — Hector Hugh Munro

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. — Hector Hugh Munro

It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself. — Hector Hugh Munro

I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English. — Hector Hugh Munro

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 — Hector Hugh Munro

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed. — Hector Hugh Munro

Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. — Hector Hugh Munro

On horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck. — Hector Hugh Munro

I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. — Hector Hugh Munro