Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Biercewas an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and compiled a satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce"...
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EPICURE, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from the senses.
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DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
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The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.
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ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane. They have had to concede a few things since the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to be conceded hereafter.A spelling reformer indicted For fudge was before the court cicted. The judge said: ""Enough -- His candle we'll snough, And his sepulchre shall not be whicted.
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HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus --hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a ""beautiful hag, all smiles,"" much as Shakespeare said, ""sweet wench."" It would not now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag --that compliment is reserved for the use of her grandchildren.
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PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place. In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
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Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father - an act which made a deep impression on me at the time
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FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids --always by a Freemason.
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CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
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MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable, for literary babes who never tire of testifying their delight in the vapid compound by appropriate googoogling. The words are commonly Saxon --that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.The man who writes in Saxon Is the man to use an ax on --Judibras
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FOREFINGER, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.
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DEAD, adj.Done with the work of breathing; done With all the world; the mad race run Though to the end; the golden goal Attained and found to be a hole! --Squatol Johnes
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ALIEN, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
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An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.