Ambrose Bierce
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.Collection: Life
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.Collection: Justice
The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.Collection: Men
Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin.Collection: Art
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.Collection: Music
ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.Collection: Views
DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.Collection: Baptism
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.Collection: Kindness
Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.Collection: Ions
YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.Collection: Past
What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.Collection: Men
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.Collection: Dies
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.Collection: Cynical
PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.Collection: Art
PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.Collection: Politics
True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.Collection: Men
RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, "Homo ventrambulans".Collection: Brother
EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.Collection: Religious
IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.Collection: Time
Justice is a commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.Collection: Justice
WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can be made; . . . also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread "per capita" of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.Collection: Food
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.Collection: Brain
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense.Collection: Missing
OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an "old man". Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an "old" book.Collection: Time
UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.Collection: Time
NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.Collection: Music
MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable . . . 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.Collection: Ideas
MISCREANT, n. A person of the highest degree of unworth. Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present signification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution to the development of our language.Collection: Mean
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.Collection: Love
MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.Collection: Art
When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.Collection: Death
R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis".Collection: Learning
The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.Collection: Love
PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.Collection: Play
LICKSPITTLE, n. A useful functionary, not infrequently found editing a newspaper . . . the lickspittle is only the blackmailer under another aspect, although the latter is frequently found as an independent species.Collection: Independent
RIBALDRY, n. Censorious language by another concerning oneself.Collection: Language
X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.Collection: Long
PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.Collection: Perfection
CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.Collection: Evil
LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.Collection: Growth
CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.Collection: Lying
IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.Collection: Inspiration
If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.Collection: Country
ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.Collection: Men
TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.Collection: Strong
The god of the world's leading religion.Collection: Atheism
Alligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.Collection: America
Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.... Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream.Collection: Dream
One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.Collection: War