ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.Poor Isabella's Dead, whose abdication Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation. For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her. To History she'll be no royal riddle -- Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle. --G.J.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
Embalm, v. 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 neighbor'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 the rose are languishing for a nibble at his glutaeus maximus.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
BONDSMAN, n. A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third. Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would be able to give. I need no bondsmen, he replied, for I can give you my word of honor. And pray what may be the value of that inquired the amused Regent. Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
CUPID, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow --of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work --this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of prosperity.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
CANONICALS, n. The motley worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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Based on Keywords: abdication, attests, griddle, parched, pea, scold, waggingOn the speech day, the production designer, who has a lot of say in things, and sometimes I didn't agree with him but I had to do what I was told, wanted the speech day to be all in neutral colours for the women, which was a good thing.
Julie Harris
I was screaming constantly, on the set, in my room... everywhere.
Jennifer Esposito
We had many more points of agreement than we had points of difference, but we did differ, and the bigger we got, the more insistent we got that each one of us should have his way.
Paul Simon