"Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity."

"Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."

"Diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country."

"I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London."

"Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers."

"Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient."

"Marriage, n.: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two."

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."

"Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond."

"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."

"Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue."

"So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!"

"Piracy n: commerce without its folly-swaddles - just as God made it."

"You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute."

"To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice."

"ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith."

"Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third."

"Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge."

"Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor."

"Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left."

"Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue."

"EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbour's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime, the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his gluteus maximus."

"Christian: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbour."

"Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost."

"Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of."

"Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having."

"ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.A striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself, whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell."

"Education n: that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."

"Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs."

"Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors."

"One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs."

"Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke."

"Edible - 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."

"On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life."

"Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure."

"Appeal in law: to put the dice into the box for another throw."

"Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white."

"Heathen n. A beknighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."

"Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward."

"Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country."

"Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age."

"Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another."

"The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge."

"Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world."

"A man is known by the company he organizes."

"Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught."