CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business. There are two kinds of camels --the camel proper and the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market --the fine ones on top --have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn Te Deum Laudamus. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are movable and immovable, but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead such were held by the Greeks, under the name Nemeseia, by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder. The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Habit The shackles of the free.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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