Ambrose Bierce

“Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.”

“Cel mai atractiv lucru din lume este fata pe care, instinctiv, o acoperim cu o panza. Cand ajunge si mai atragatoare, fascinanta chiar, o punem la doi metri sub pamant.”

“Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting”

“Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”

“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.”

“Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.”

“On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.”

“O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!”

“Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.”

“This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.”

“So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!”

“In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.”

“Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.”

“Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.”

“Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”

“DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.”

“ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.A striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself, whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.”

“NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.”

“Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.”

“Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.”

“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”

“Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'.”

“Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ”

“Laughter--an interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features, and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious, and though intermittent, incurable.”

“Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.”

“Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.”

“Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.”

“I was born to poor because of honest parents.”

“MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.”

“God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.”

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

“As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it...”

“Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.”

“An ambassador is a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given an office by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.”

“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”

“Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.”

“Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.”

“San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen”

“LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.”

“Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel.”

“Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.”

“Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

“Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.”

“Twice – Once too often.”

“Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue”

“DOG: A kind of additional or subsidiary Diety designed to catch the overflow or surplus of the world's worship.”

“Litigation – A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”

“Lawyer – One skilled in the circumvention of the law.”

“History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”