REFUGE, n. Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua provided six cities of refuge --Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem and Hebron --to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the pleasures of the chase whereby the soul of the dead man was appropriately honored by observations akin to the funeral games of early Greece.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Embalm, v. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and the rose are languishing for a nibble at his glutaeus maximus.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DRUIDS, n. Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice. Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to Britain. Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his talent for human sacrifice was considerable. Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew rents. They were, in short, heathens and --as they were once complacently catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England --Dissenters.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Man Quotes, Pleasure Quotes, Soul QuotesBased on Keywords: golan, hebron, joshua
I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
Orson Scott Card
In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
Wallace Stevens
Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place.
Phillip E. Johnson