AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.
Ambrose BierceEpitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
Ambrose BierceAge - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
Ambrose BierceBattle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
Ambrose BierceFRYING-PAN, n. One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman's kitchen. The frying-pan was invented by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.
Ambrose Bierce