"The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations."

"Epitaph n: an inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect."

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

"The echo of a platitude."

"Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions."

"Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly."

"DOG: A kind of additional or subsidiary Diety designed to catch the overflow or surplus of the world's worship."

"Achievement: The death of an endeavor and the birth of disgust."

"Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly."

"It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better."

"What did I fear, and why? - I, to whom the night had beena more familiar facethan that of man -I, in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had given to solitude and darkness and silence only a more alluring interest and charm!"

"Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone."

"Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion."

"Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age."

"What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends."

"Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed."

"Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance."

"Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you."

"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage."

"Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

"Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions."

"Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends."

"Philanthropist: a rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket."

"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility."

"Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized."

"Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while."

"Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state."

"Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."

"Perseverance n.: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success."

"Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."

"Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage."

"Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus:Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore-Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed."

"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity."

"Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her."

"Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be."

"Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh."

"Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is.Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work."

"Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead."

"Idiot - A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line."

"They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion."

"Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination."

"This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation."

"Ignoramus: a person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about."

"Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow."

"Historian - a broad-gauge gossip."

"Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name."

"Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."

"Deep sadness is an artist of powers that affects people in different ways. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, shocking all the emotions to a sharper life. To another, it comes as the blow of a crushing strike."