Parenting & Family Quote by Hector Hugh Munro

Hors d'oeuvres, in Munro's hands, aren’t cute little appetizers; they’re a miniature tragedy of anticipation. The joke lands because it pretends to talk about food while quietly anatomizing a whole temperament: the kind of mind that treats life as a sequence of promised delights, then spends the actual feast regretting how it managed its desire. Calling them “pathetic” is the sly pivot. It’s not the canapes that are pitiable, it’s the diner who can’t simply eat what’s in front of him without converting it into a rehearsal for disappointment.

The childhood comparison sharpens the cruelty. Childhood, in this view, isn’t innocence; it’s suspense. You “go through” it scanning for the next course, making the present into mere prelude. Then adulthood arrives as the long, heavy menu where the imagination has already mispriced everything. Munro nails a specific psychological loop: you under-consume the small pleasures because you’re saving room for the grand ones, and then the grand ones show up and aren’t grand enough - or you’re too busy grading them to enjoy them. Regret becomes the only reliable aftertaste.

Context matters: Munro (better known as Saki) specialized in drawing-room comedy with a knife hidden in the napkin. The elegant setting flatters the speaker’s sophistication, but the insight is pointedly unsophisticated: a portrait of acquisitive anxiety. Even the structure mimics the menu it describes - a quick amuse-bouche of whimsy followed by the heavier course of self-recognition.