USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
Ambrose BierceREVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.
Ambrose BierceEnthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose BierceAcquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose BierceMATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.
Ambrose BierceRAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau ร la financiรจre is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Ambrose Bierce