Ambrose Gwinett Bierce Quotes on Facts (5 Quotes)

AIM, n. The task we set our wishes to.Cheer up Have you no aim in life She tenderly inquired.An aim Well, no, I haven't, wife The fact is --I have fired. --G.J.

Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises

SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly. To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth CommandmentSix days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.

HIBERNATE, v. i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow. Three or four centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their brooks, clinging together in globular masses. They have apparently been compelled to give up the custom and account of the foulness of the brooks. Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation of people who hibernate. By some investigators, the fasting of Lent is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to which the Church gave a religious significance but this view was strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.

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