Ambrose Bierce

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

Achievement; the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.

Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

REVOLUTION, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. . . . the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.

Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.

War: A by-product of the arts of peace.

HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.