Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #12 O.E.D.: David Lean, 1969, 3 hours 30 min. Lean's version of the Oxford Dictionary has been accused of shallowness in its treatment of a complete work. Omar Sharif tends to overact as aardvark, but Alec Guiness is solid in the role of abbacy. As usual, the photography is stunning. With Julie Christie. | |
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones | |
The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the lower the mailing cost. -- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify -- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language | |
miracle: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment. -- Webster's Dictionary | |
"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions." -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation | |
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 | |
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" | |
Accident, n.: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. -- Foolish 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" | |
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" | |
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
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" | |
boss, n: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud." | |
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" | |
cursor address, n: "Hello, cursor!" -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
curtation, n.: The enforced compression of a string in the fixed-length field environment. The problem of fitting extremely variable-length strings such as names, addresses, and item descriptions into fixed-length records is no trivial matter. Neglect of the subtle art of curtation has probably alienated more people than any other aspect of data processing. You order Mozart's "Don Giovanni" from your record club, and they invoice you $24.95 for MOZ DONG. The witless mapping of the sublime onto the ridiculous! Equally puzzling is the curtation that produces the same eight characters, THE BEST, whether you order "The Best of Wagner", "The Best of Schubert", or "The Best of the Turds". Similarly, wine lovers buying from computerized wineries twirl their glasses, check their delivery notes, and inform their friends, "A rather innocent, possibly overtruncated CAB SAUV 69 TAL." The squeezing of fruit into 10 columns has yielded such memorable obscenities as COX OR PIP. The examples cited are real, and the curtational methodology which produced them is still with us. MOZ DONG n. Curtation of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, as performed by the computerized billing ensemble of the Internat'l Preview Society, Great Neck (sic), N.Y. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP 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" | |
default, n.: [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you, mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP 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" | |
Endless Loop, n.: see Loop, Endless. Loop, Endless, n.: see Endless Loop. -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary | |
Engram, n.: 1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram." 2. A particular memory in physical form. [Usage note: this term is no longer in common use. Prior to Wilson and Magruder's historic discovery, the nature of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists, psychologists, and even computer scientists. In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of thirty seven genetically transmitted cooperating TECO macros. Human memory was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman coded uppercase-only ASCII strings. Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that time.] -- New Century Unabridged English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2007 A.D. | |
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
flowchart, n. & v.: [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."] 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate (a problem) with esoteric cartoons. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
gyroscope, n.: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary | |
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" | |
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" | |
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" | |
MAFIA, n: [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay. Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and entire nodal aggravations. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP 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" | |
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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" | |
Peace, n.: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
QWERT (kwirt) n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth] 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering 2. [Colloq.] one thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry. 3. [Anat.] a painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus 4. [Slang] person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert. -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed. | |
Recursion n.: See Recursion. -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary | |
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" | |
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" | |
Truthful, adj.: Dumb and illiterate. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
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" | |
alta, v: To change; make or become different; modify. ansa, v: A spoken or written reply, as to a question. baa, n: A place people meet to have a few drinks. Baaston, n: The capital of Massachusetts. baaba, n: One whose business is to cut or trim hair or beards. beea, n: An alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and hops, often found in baas. caaa, n: An automobile. centa, n: A point around which something revolves; axis. (Or someone involved with the Knicks.) chouda, n: A thick seafood soup, often in a milk base. dada, n: Information, esp. information organized for analysis or computation. -- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary | |
Decemba, n: The 12th month of the year. erra, n: A mistake. faa, n: To, from, or at considerable distance. Linder, n: A female name. memba, n: To recall to the mind; think of again. New Hampsha, n: A state in the northeast United States. New Yaak, n: Another state in the northeast United States. Novemba, n: The 11th month of the year. Octoba, n: The 10th month of the year. ova, n: Location above or across a specified position. What the season is when the Knicks quit playing. -- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary | |
paak, n: A stadium or inclosed playing field. To put or leave (a a vehicle) for a time in a certain location. patato, n: The starchy, edible tuber of a widely cultivated plant. Septemba, n: The 9th month of the year. shua, n: Having no doubt; certain. sista, n: A female having the same mother and father as the speaker. tamato, n: A fleshy, smooth-skinned reddish fruit eaten in salads or as a vegetable. troopa, n: A state policeman. Wista, n: A city in central Masschewsetts. yaad, n: A tract of ground adjacent to a building. -- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary | |
Yawd [noun, Bostonese]: the campus of Have Id. -- Webster's Unafraid 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" | |
As me an' me marrer was readin' a tyape, The tyape gave a shriek mark an' tried tae escyape; It skipped ower the gyate tae the end of the field, An' jigged oot the room wi' a spool an' a reel! Follow the leader, Johnny me laddie, Follow it through, me canny lad O; Follow the transport, Johnny me laddie, Away, lad, lie away, canny lad O! -- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George Wither. Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well". In our own time, "The Dictionary of National Biography" notes that his work "is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity and flatness. It usually lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel". High praise, indeed, and it may tempt you to savour a typically rewarding stanza: It is taken from "I loved a lass" and is concerned with the higher emotions. She would me "Honey" call, She'd -- O she'd kiss me too. But now alas! She's left me Falero, lero, loo. Among other details of his mistress which he chose to immortalize was her prudent choice of footwear. The fives did fit her shoe. In 1639 the great poet's life was endangered after his capture by the Royalists during the English Civil War. When Sir John Denham, the Royalist poet, heard of Wither's imminent execution, he went to the King and begged that his life be spared. When asked his reason, Sir John replied, "Because that so long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the worst poet in England." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
A man with 3 wings and a dictionary is cousin to the turkey. | |
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" | |
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" | |
Yes, we're all anti-american terrorists who plan to make the US economy collapse by inventing lots of new words which will have to be added to the dictionary, making the US economy unable to support the ever-growing dictionaries and ensuring the Americans will be unable to (learn to) spell, leaving them dead in the water if there's ever a linguistic war between them and the UK. - Rik van Riel explaining the real reason behind spelling mistakes in the linux kernel | |
## a_nick (nobody@c213-89-87-111.cm-upc.chello.se) has joined #python <a_nick> how do i add a new key to a dictionary? <a_nick> nm <dash> heh :) <dash> behold the problem-solving power of #python. | |
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" | |
Got a dictionary? I want to know the meaning of life. | |
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" |