Ambrose Bierce

“Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.”

“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”

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

“Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.”

“It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.”

“Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

“Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.”

“Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.”

“Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.”

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

“Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.”

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

“Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.”

“Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”

“To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.”

“War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.”

“Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.”

“Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.”

“What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.”

“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.”

“Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.”

“Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.”

“The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.”

“Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.”