Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Ambrose BierceREPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
Ambrose BierceEdible, adj.: 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.
Ambrose BierceFREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
Ambrose BierceGUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
Ambrose BierceAn immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
Ambrose BierceLAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system - an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.
Ambrose BierceTELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
Ambrose BierceHYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that
Ambrose BierceGENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
Ambrose BiercePOSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
Ambrose BierceMAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.
Ambrose BiercePASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose BierceA 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.
Ambrose BierceA wedding is a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
Ambrose BierceWork: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
Ambrose BierceThe gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose BierceCensor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.
Ambrose BierceAmnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose BierceOATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.
Ambrose BierceInternational arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoldering one
Ambrose BierceMUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose BierceNothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.
Ambrose BierceGNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
Ambrose BierceCat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
Ambrose BierceCOMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
Ambrose BierceConversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose BierceBLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose BierceSARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it.
Ambrose BierceFaith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose BierceA popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.
Ambrose BierceBRANDY, n. A cordial composed on one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.
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