Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographerAmbrose Gwinett Bierce
DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.
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 Wottel
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
INSECTIVORA, n.See, cries the chorus of admiring preachers,How Providence provides for all His creaturesHis care, the gnat said, even the insects follows For us He has provided wrens and swallows. --Sempen Railey
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids --always by a Freemason.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
HEAT, n.Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode Of motion, but I know now how he's proving His point but this I know --hot words bestowed With skill will set the human fist a-moving, And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.Crede expertum --I have seen them, child. --Gorton Swope
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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