I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
— Ambrose Bierce
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
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.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Doubt is the father of invention.
When you doubt, abstain.
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
