Ambrose Bierce

An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.

ARMY, n. A class of non-producers who defend the nation by devouring everything likely to tempt an enemy to invade.

Resign, v. To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.

FREEDOM, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.

Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged.

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.

There is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose - more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of its work.

Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

Gravitación, s. Tendencia de todos los cuerpos a acercarse unos a otros con fuerza proporcional a la cantidad de materia que contienen; la cantidad de materia que contienen se determina por la tendencia a acercarse unos a otros. Bello y edificante ejemplo de cómo la ciencia, después de hacer de A la prueba de B, hace de B la prueba de A.

DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

AMATEUR, n. A public nuisance who mistakes taste for skill, and confounds his ambition with his ability.

LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction. LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.