What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool.They stood before the altar and supplied The fire themselves in which their fat was fried. In vain the sacrifice --no god will claim An offering burnt with an unholy flame. --M.P. NopputAmbrose Gwinett Bierce
ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English civil war --so called from his habit of wearing his hair short, whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the fundamental cause of quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair grow than to wash his neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation. Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this day beneath the snows of British civility.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ALLIGATOR, n. The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World. Herodotus says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the other rivers. From the notches on his back the alligator is called a sawrian.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
REDUNDANT, adj. Superfluous needless de trop.The Sultan said There's evidence abundant To prove this unbelieving dog redundant. To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive, Replied His head, at least, appears excessive. --Habeeb SuleimanMr. Debs is a redundant citizen. --Theodore Roosevelt
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
MAGNITUDE, n. Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small. If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been. To an understanding familiar with the relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life- fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal. Possibly the wee creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of these to another.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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