Insurance – an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Alliance – in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.
DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper – the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort.
Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
Scriptures – The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
To the eye of failure success is an accident.
TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
A wedding is a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.
Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
Enthusiasm – a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.