Ambrose Bierce

MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.

TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.

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.

OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.

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

Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.

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

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation-it is fond of killing-patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.

Here's to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands.

REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.

I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities.

A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects every year. The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His creatures.

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.