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

Categorized in : Men Cat Adversity

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Hector Hugh Munro

oysters unhappy happiness

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, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.

Hector Hugh Munro

cat funny children

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

Hector Hugh Munro

youth age young

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

Hector Hugh Munro

powerful witty funny

Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Hector Hugh Munro

women never-forget elephants

Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.

Hector Hugh Munro

poverty together home

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

Hector Hugh Munro

growing use way

In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse.

Hector Hugh Munro

mice cheese rooms

Children are given us to discourage our better emotions.

Hector Hugh Munro

given emotion children

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

gossip grateful hate

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

pessimism optimism middle

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Hector Hugh Munro

sarcastic witty funny

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

Hector Hugh Munro

politics couple sometimes

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

childhood wish food

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

Hector Hugh Munro

buddhism beautiful thinking

Oysters are more beautiful than any religion... There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

Hector Hugh Munro

oysters buddhism beautiful

Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

Hector Hugh Munro

finding-yourself healing tea

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

score birth poet

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

wine food men

There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.

Hector Hugh Munro

decay hatred humanity