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.
— Ambrose Bierce
Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.
Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.
Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
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.
To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
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.
Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
A man is known by the company he organizes.
Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.
Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Edible - 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.
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
