Inspirational quotes by Ambrose Bierce.
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
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.
Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There arefour kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, andpraiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slainwhether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is foradvantage of the lawyers.
Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is.Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbour's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime, the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his gluteus maximus.
The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle")
Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'.
OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer's attitude toward "obsolete" words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader.
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably out to be. His chief occupation is the extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
Fear has no brains it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.
acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
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