Ambrose Bierce

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.

Conservative n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

Jealous adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Doubt indulged and cherished is in danger of becoming denial, but if honest and bent on thorough investigation it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Curiosity n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Education n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Absurdity n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Patience n. A minor form of dispair disguised as a virtue.

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit along the line of desire.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Compromise n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.