Ambrose Bierce

“ Of an idle young woman who tarried About a church-door for a look at the bride, Although 'twas herself that was married. To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand Ideas -- with thought and emotion. I pity the dunces who don't understand The speech of earth, heaven and ocean. ”

“ A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. ”

“ A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. ”

“ A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly. ”

“ Greatly displeased, the King vetoed it, informing the Opposition that if they did that again they would pay for their obstinacy with their heads. The entire forty promptly disemboweled themselves.
"What shall we do now?" the King asked. "Liberal institutions cannot be maintained without a party of Opposition." ”

“ How lonely he who thinks to vex With bandinage the Solemn Sex! Of levity, Mere Man, beware; None but the Grave deserve the Unfair. Percy P. Orminder
OPPOSITION, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
The King of Ghargaroo, who had been abroad to study the science of government, appointed one hundred of his fattest subjects as members of a parliament to make laws for the collection of revenue. Forty of these he named the Party of Opposition and had his Prime Minister carefully instruct them in their duty of opposing every royal measure. ”

“ By the kind of intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it. ”

“ ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke. ”

“ 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.
"Old books? The devil take them!" Goby said. "Fresh every day must be my books and bread." Nature herself approves the Goby rule And gives us every moment a fresh fool. Harley Shum ”

“ The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. ”

“ A devil thrown out of a woman by the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the trees, pursued by a hundred persons, until the open country was reached, where by a leap higher than a church spire he escaped into a bird. A chaplain in Cromwell's army exorcised a soldier's obsessing devil by throwing the soldier into the water, when the devil came to the surface. ”

“ A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word 'simulation' is from 'simia', an ape ”