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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

The covers of this book are too far apart.
                -- Book review by Ambrose Bierce.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
we don't know yet."
-Ambrose Bierce
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
we don't know yet."
-Ambrose Bierce
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Noncombatant:  A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Mausoleum:  The final and funniest folly of the rich.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Riches:  A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I
am well pleased."
-- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
Saint:  A dead sinner revised and edited.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Meekness:  Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Absolute:  Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
limited monarchies, where the soverign's power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer:  A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Alliance:  In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Disobedience:  The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Egotist:  A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Administration:  An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
-- Ambrose Bierce
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Ocean:  A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man --
who has no gills.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Physician:  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy:  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Politics:  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Politician:  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
his tail for the trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Pray:  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Presidency:  The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Proboscis:  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.  For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Inadmissible:  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous
actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.  --Ambrose Bierce
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
   "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
Do you think that fair criticism?"
   "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
-- Ambrose Bierce
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- S. Johnson, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by J. Boswell

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                -- Ambrose Bierce

When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.
                -- Sen. Roscoe Conkling

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- Boies Penrose
The distinction between Freedom and Liberty is not accurately known;
naturalists have been unable to find a living specimen of either.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Absentee, n.:
        A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
        himself from the sphere of exaction.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Abstainer, n.:
        A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
        pleasure.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Absurdity, n.:
        A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Acquaintance, n:
        A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well
        enough to lend to.  A degree of friendship called slight when the
        object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Admiration, n.:
        Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Adore, v.:
        To venerate expectantly.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Age, n.:
        That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
        still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
        to commit.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
air, n.:
        A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the
        fattening of the poor.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Alliance, n.:
        In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
        their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
        separately plunder a third.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Alone, adj.:
        In bad company.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Ambidextrous, adj.:
        Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Ambition, n:
        An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
        living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Anoint, v.:
        To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently
        slippery.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Applause, n:
        The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Barometer, n.:
        An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
        are having.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Battle, n.:
        A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that
        will not yield to the tongue.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Beauty, n.:
        The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
birth, n:
        The first and direst of all disasters.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Bore, n.:
        A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
brain, n:
        The apparatus with which we think that we think.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
brain, v: [as in "to brain"]
        To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source
        of error in an opponent.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Bride, n.:
        A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Cabbage, n.:
        A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
        a man's head.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
clairvoyant, n.:
        A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
        which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Confidant, confidante, n:
        One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided to himself by C.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Coronation, n.:
        The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible
        signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Coward, n.:
        One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
critic, n.:
        A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
        to please him.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Cynic, n.:
        A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
        as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
        out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Dawn, n.:
        The time when men of reason go to bed.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Deliberation, n.:
        The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
        buttered on.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Dentist, n.:
        A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
        coins out of one's pockets.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Distress, n.:
        A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Egotism, n:
        Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.

Egotist, n:
        A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Famous, adj.:
        Conspicuously miserable.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
genealogy, n.:
        An account of one's descent from an ancestor
        who did not particularly care to trace his own.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Hand, n.:
        A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
        commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Happiness, n.:
        An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Hatred, n.:
        A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Heaven, n.:
        A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
        their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
        expound your own.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Hippogriff, n.:
        An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
        The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
        The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
        is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full
        of surprises.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Honorable, adj.:
        Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In legislative
        bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as,
        "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Idiot, n.:
        A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
        affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Impartial, adj.:
        Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
        espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
        conflicting opinions.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Incumbent, n.:
        Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Infancy, n.:
        The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies
        about us."  The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Interpreter, n.:
        One who enables two persons of different languages to
        understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
        the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Labor, n.:
        One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
lawsuit, n.:
        A machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Liar, n.:
        A lawyer with a roving commission.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Mad, adj.:
        Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Magnet, n.:
        Something acted upon by magnetism.

Magnetism, n.:
        Something acting upon a magnet.

The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of
one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with
a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Magpie, n.:
        A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it
        might be taught to talk.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Major premise:
        Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise:
        A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion:
        Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Secondary Conclusion:
        Do you realize how many holes there would be if people
        would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
Male, n.:
        A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.  The male of the
        human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man.  The genus
        has two varieties:  good providers and bad providers.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Misfortune, n.:
        The kind of fortune that never misses.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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 ...
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
November, n.:
        The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Once, adv.:
        Enough.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
optimist, n.:
        A proponent of the belief that black is white.

        A pessimist asked God for relief.
        "Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.
        "No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that
would justify them."
        "The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked
something -- the mortality of the optimist."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Painting, n.:
        The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
        exposing them to the critic.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Peace, n.:
        In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
        periods of fighting.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
politics, n.:
        A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
        The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Positive, adj.:
        Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Prejudice:
        A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Reporter, n.:
        A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
        tempest of words.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Revolution, n.:
        In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Senate, n.:
        A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Technicality, n.:
        In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having
        accused a neighbor of murder.  His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt
        hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one
        side of his head fell on one shoulder and the other side upon the
        other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the
        court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder,
        for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an
        inference.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Telephone, n.:
        An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages
        of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Truthful, adj.:
        Dumb and illiterate.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Wedding, n:
        A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes
        to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Wit, n.:
        The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
        ... by leaving it out.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Year, n.:
        A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the
molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose
existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A fifth
theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about
the matter than the others.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as virtue.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, on qualifiers
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable
Christian forbearance among men.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
        After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven.  As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
        "This is true," He replied.
        "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
        "What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
        "Oh, no!"  Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
        It was so granted.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be
proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge
to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If
there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute
of value.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
A man is known by the company he organizes.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.  Cheat.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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