In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Idiot – A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,...

History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There arefour kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, andpraiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slainwhether he fell by one kind or...

Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever,...

acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with...

Hash, x. There is no definition for this word – nobody knows what hash is.Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and...

From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps...

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.

Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.

Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

The hardest tumble a man can take is to fall over his own bluff.

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel.

Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!

Aphorism, n. Predigested wisdom.