HEARSE, n. Death's baby-carriage.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
HELPMATE, n. A wife, or bitter half.Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat Says the priest. Since the time 'o yer wooin' She's niver sic assisted in what ye were at -- For it's naught ye are ever doin'.That's true of yer Riverence sic, Patrick replies, And no sign of contrition envicesBut, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies, For she helps to mate the expinses sic --Marley WottelAmbrose Gwinett Bierce
HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the esat of emotions and sentiments --a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling --tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility --these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion --4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration and for further light consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DANCE, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of blood.Fair Venus, speared by Diomed, Restrained the raging chief and saidBehold, rash mortal, whom you've bled -- Your soul's stained white with ichorshed --Mary Doke
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of the Trojan war could have raised with ease. Homer never tires of sneering at men who live in these degenerate days, which is perhaps why they suffered him to beg his bread --a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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