When in Rome, do as Rome does.
Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.
Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern ‘small hot bird.’
SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.
Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.
ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.
PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.
IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem – a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.
There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.
The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.
Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that ’they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn’t come here to fear. They hadn’t come to die. They had come to win.
In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.
Washington’s character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.