starrwriter
12-29-2005, 11:32 PM
BIERCEISMS
A dictionary from the mind of Ambrose Bierce
Aborigines: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Beauty: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Brain: An apparatus with which we think we think.
Calamities: Misfortunes to ourselves or good fortune to others.
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Revolution: In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
War: God's way of teaching Americans geography.
A dictionary from the mind of Ambrose Bierce
Aborigines: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Beauty: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Brain: An apparatus with which we think we think.
Calamities: Misfortunes to ourselves or good fortune to others.
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Revolution: In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
War: God's way of teaching Americans geography.