Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Ambrose Bierce
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Doubt is the father of invention.
When you doubt, abstain.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
