Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination . . .

PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.

QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.