Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1913)
American satirist, critic, short story writer, editor and journalist.
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.
Incompossible, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both — as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.
Justice, n. A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.
An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Kilt, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen [sic] in America and Americans in Scotland.
Cannon, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.
Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
Monday, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1440 times a day.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Cabbage, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.