Ambrose Bierce

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

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

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.

It is evident that skepticism while it makes no actual change in man always makes him feel better.

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

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

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

Sweater n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

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

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

Present n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

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

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

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

Positive adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

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

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

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

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.

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

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

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

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

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

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

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.

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

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

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

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

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Ardor n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

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

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

Famous adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

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

Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

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

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

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

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.

Revolution n. In politics an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Edible - 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.

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.

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

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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

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

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

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

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

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

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.

Learning n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Childhood: 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.

Who never doubted never half believed. Where doubt is there truth is - it is her shadow.