ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document the scabbard of a bill the husk of a remittance the bed-gown of a love-letter.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless henAmbrose Gwinett Bierce
ALONE, adj. In bad company.In contact, lo the flint and steel, By spark and flame, the thought reveal That he the metal, she the stone, Had cherished secretly alone. --Booley Fito
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. What is your religion my son inquired the Archbishop of Rheims. Pardon, monseigneur, replied Rochebriant I am ashamed of it. Then why do you not become an atheist; Impossible I should be ashamed of atheism. In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the absemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef- eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same way everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nation's military power.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
MAIDEN, n. A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the field by the canary --which, also, is more portable.A lovelorn maiden she sat and sang -- This quaint, sweet song sang sheIt's O for a youth with a football bang And a muscle fair to see The Captain he Of a team to be On the gridiron he shall shine, A monarch by right divine, And never to roast on it --me --Opoline Jones
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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