RAPACITY, n. Providence without industry. The thrift of power.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
BOTTLE-NOSED, adj. Having a nose created in the image of its maker.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity. Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall's belief that nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what was known among the ancients as modesty. The nature of that sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us. The study of lost arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts themselves recovered. This is an epoch of renaissances, and there is ground for hope that the primitive blush may be dragged from its hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the stage.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with aureola, or nimbus, a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel --than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, jacere, to throw, because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Aborigines, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber they fertilize.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Truth -- An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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By his disobedience of God's law, before man had exercised his power to bring children into the earth, not only Adam lost everything for himself, but his children were born as sinners, imperfect, and without the right to live.
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