Ambrose Gwinett Bierce Quotes on Lions (3 Quotes)

MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women. As in Rome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier in Otumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, female heretics were thrown to the mice. Jakak-Zotp, the historian, the only Otumwump whose writings have descended to us, says that these martyrs met their death with little dignity and much exertion. He even attempts to exculpate the mice (such is the malice of bigotry) by declaring that the unfortunate women perished, some from exhaustion, some of broken necks from falling over their own feet, and some from lack of restoratives. The mice, he avers, enjoyed the pleasures of the chase with composure. But if Roman history is nine-tenths lying, we can hardly expect a smaller proportion of that rhetorical figure in the annals of a people capable of so incredible cruelty to a lovely women for a hard heart has a false tongue.

LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler SilcoxThe electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades. Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores O tempora O moresIt should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.

GREAT, adj. I'm great, the Lion said --I reign The monarch of the wood and plain; The Elephant replied I'm great -- No quadruped can match my weight; I'm great --no animal has half So long a neck said the Giraffe. I'm great, the Kangaroo said --see My femoral muscularity; The 'Possum said I'm great --behold, My tail is lithe and bald and cold; An Oyster fried was understood To say I'm great because I'm good; Each reckons greatness to consist In that in which he heads the list, And Vierick thinks he tops his class Because he is the greatest ass. --Arion Spurl Doke.