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Ambrose Bierce

b: Meigs County, Ohio, Jun 24, 1842

d: Mexico?, 0, 1914

American. Journalist. Newspaper, fiction writer; disappeard in Mexico covering revolution led by Pancho Villa.

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A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.

A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.

A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Abasement: n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth of power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

Abatis: n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Abrupt, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it.

Abscond. To ''move'' in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.

Absent: adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

Absentee: n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Academe: n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

Accident: n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

Accord: n. Harmony.

Accordion: n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

Accountability: n. The mother of caution.

Accuse: v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.

Achievement: n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Acknowledge: v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Actually: adv. Perhaps; possibly.

Adage: n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

Adamant: n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.

Adder: n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

Adherent: n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

Administration: n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Admonition: n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.

Advice: the smallest current coin.

Affianced: pp. Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.

Affliction: n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.

African: n. A nigger that votes our way.

Age --that period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit.

Agitator: n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors – to dislodge the worms.

Air: n. A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.

Alderman: n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding.

Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

ALLEGIANCE, n. This thing Allegiance, as I suppose, Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose, Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed.

Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Alone: adj. In bad company.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Amnesty: n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.

An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

An easy answer to every human problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.

An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!

An egotist is a person of low taste-more interested in himself than in me.

An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

Antipathy: n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.

Apologize: v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.

Apostate: n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

Apothecary, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave-worm's provider.

Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

Appetite: n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.

Applause: n. The echo of a platitude.

April Fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.

Archbishop: n. An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Arena: n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

Arithmetic is counting to twenty without taking off your shoes.

Armor: n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

Arrayed: pp. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.

Arrest: v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

Artlessness: n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

Asperse: v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.

Auctioneer: n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Back: n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.

Backbite. To ''speak of a man as you find him'' when he can't find you.

Bait: n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Barometer: n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Birth: n. The first and direst of all disasters.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.

Brain: An apparatus with which we think that we think.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all the assassins -- entertain grave misgivings.

CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat.

CAPITOL, n: the seat of misgovernment.

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum -- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.-

Childhood: n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Christian: n. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

Christian: One who thinks the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

Clergyman: n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Creation is a mighty joke, but the laugh is at my own expense.

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Critic: n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Dentist: n.: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Education: n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.

Egotist, n: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.

Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Experience: n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel.

FAMOUS, adj: Conspicuously miserable.

FIDELITY, n: A virtue particular to those about to be betrayed.

Flag, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London - "Rubbish may be shot here."

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Fork: n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work: the ancients painted their statues. The only present alliance between the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons.

Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Good writing is essentially clear thinking made visible.

Habit: The shackles of the free.

Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Heaven, n.: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.

History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly inimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, & soldiers mostly fools.

History: n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.

Hurricane, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain old-fashioned sea-captains.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoldering one.

Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

LABOR, n: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Lawyer: n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.

Life: n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed.

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Logic: n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Longevity: n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder... It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Magpie: n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.

Male: n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

Malefactor: n. The chief factor in the progress of the human race.

Mammalia: n. pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

Mammon: n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

Man: n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.

Manicheism: n. The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.

Mankind... infests the whole habitable Earth and Canada.

Marriage, n: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Martyr: n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

Material: adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.

Mausoleum: n. The final and funniest folly of the rich.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Me: pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

Medicine: n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

Mendacious: adj. Addicted to rhetoric.

Merchant: n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

Mercy: n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

Mesmerism: n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.

Metropolis: n. A stronghold of provincialism.

Millenium: n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.

Mine: adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

Minor: adj. Less objectionable.

Minstrel: adj. Formerly a poet, singer or musician; now a nigger with a color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood can bear.

Miracle: n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.

Misdemeanor: n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.

Misericorde: n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

Misfortune: n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.

Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.

Monarchical government: n. Government.

Monday: n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.

Money: n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society. Supportable property.

Monkey: n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.

Monsignor: n. A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.

Moral: adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

More: adj. The comparative degree of too much.

Mousquetaire: n. A long glove covering a part of the arm. Worn in New Jersey. But "mousquetaire" is a mighty poor way to spell muskeeter.

Mouth: In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.

Mugwump: n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.

Mulatto: n. A child of two races, ashamed of both.

Mustang: n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.

Myrmidon: n. A follower of Achilles – particularly when he didn't lead.

Mythology: n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

November, n.The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

Opera: n. A play representing life in another world whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes.

Opiate, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

OPTIMISM, n: The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

Optimist: n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

Pain: n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

Pantheism: n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

Pantomime: n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

Pardon: v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.

Passport: n. A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going abroad, exposing him as a n alien and pointing him out for special reprobation and outrage.

Pastime: n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Patriot: n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

Peace - In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Phonograph: n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.

Pleasure: n. The least hateful form of dejection.

Politeness: n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.

REDSKIN, n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red -- at least not on the outside.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.

Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

Responsibility. A detachable burden easily shifted to shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

Reverence:n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Rum, n.Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers. -

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

Satan, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws." "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul˜you ask for the right to make his laws?" "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself." It was so ordered.

Scriptures: n.: The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

SWEATER, n: Garment worn by child when it's mother is feeling chilly.

Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

That moral penal colony of the world.

The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

The are and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

The average person thinks he isn't.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

The gambling known as business looks with severe disfavor on the business known as gambling.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

The man who runs may fight again.

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.

The purpose of satire, it has been rightfully said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cozy half-truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.

The purpose of satire, it has been rightfully said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cozy half-truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.

The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

The wife, or bitter half.

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.

Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.

This ONLY is denied God: The power to undo the past.

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.

To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

To forcibly remove a politician from office, one has to meet a much higher standard of dishonesty.

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Truth -- An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.

TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

WAR, n: A by-product of the arts of peace...

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

When in Rome, do as Rome does.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his.

Wit, n.: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery ... by leaving it out.

With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

With the foolish we should play the fool.

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a ''joke.''

Woman absent is woman dead.

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.

Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.

Year n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

ZEAL, n: A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.