PRECIPITATE, adj. Anteprandial. Precipitate in all, this sinner Took action first, and then his dinner. --Judibras.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which prescribed the death penalty for Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge a fairy, and it was universally respected.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 lexicographer
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Done to a turn on the iron, behold Him who to be famous aspired. Content Well, his grill has a plating of gold, And his twistings are greatly admired. --Hassan Brubuddy
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
In Italian, a belladonna is a beautiful lady in English, it's a deadly poison.
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
PALM, n. A species of tree having several varieties, of which the familiar itching palm (Palma hominis) is most widely distributed and sedulously cultivated. This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver. The metal will adhere with remarkable tenacity. The fruit of the itching palm is so bitter and unsatisfying that a considerable percentage of it is sometimes given away in what are known as benefactions.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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