Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.
Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure
SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.
DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
ZEUS /n./ The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
Introduction - a social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.
A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.
Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.
DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed advantageous to embrace.
For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.
The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.
YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.
Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.
PICKANINNY, n. The young of the "Procyanthropos", or "Americanus dominans". It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.