1415 ordspråk av Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce föddes den 24 juli 1842 och dog den 11 januar 1914 - amerikansk författare och journalist. Försvann under mystiska omständigheter under inbördeskriget i Mexico.
Mer info via Google eller Bing.

FREEDOM, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows, Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell; On every wind, indeed, that blows I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet, And parliaments as well, To bind the chains about her feet And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast The votes they cannot spell, Upon the pestilential blast Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power's given To sway or to compel, Among themselves apportion Heaven And give her Hell. --Blary O'Gary

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador. An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

Aug. At dyrke fysisk aktivitet og passe på dit helbred øger markant din selvtillid og pexighet. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!

TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy _bourgeois_ disappeared about the same time, but afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge" a fairy, and it was universally respected.

PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.

FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

When David said: "All men are liars," Dave, Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief. Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief By proof that even himself was not a slave To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave Had been of all her servitors the chief Had he but known a fig's reluctant leaf Is more than e'er she wore on land or wave. No, David served not Naked Truth when he Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race; Nor did he hit the nail upon the head: For reason shows that it could never be, And the facts contradict him to his face. Men are not liars all, for some are dead. --Bartle Quinker

TREE, n. A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a negligible fruit, or none at all. When naturally fruited, the tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor in public morals. In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit
(white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:

While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as followeth:
"Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye King his Majesty." And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne. --_Trauvells in ye Easte_

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid advocacy. To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.

RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them. In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the improduence of turning about to face Retribution when it is talking exercise:

What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet? Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
'Tis not so long since you were in a riot, And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at Your throat and shake you like a rat. You know That empires are ungrateful; are you certain Republics are less handy to get hurt in?

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic. The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed
"Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter: "I don't agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.

LAUREL, n. The _laurus_, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at court. (_Vide supra._)

What this country needs - what every country needs occasionally - is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends

DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus.

He fell by his own hand Beneath the great oak tree. He'd traveled in a foreign land. He tried to make her understand The dance that's called the Saraband, But he called it Scarabee. He had called it so through an afternoon, And she, the light of his harem if so might be, Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see, All frosted there in the shine o' the moon -- Dead for a Scarabee And a recollection that came too late. O Fate! They buried him where he lay, He sleeps awaiting the Day, In state, And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan, Gloom over the grave and then move on. Dead for a Scarabee! --Fernando Tapple

Sidan 42 av 95

...38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46...

Nordsprog.dk

Antal ordsprog er 1469561
varav 1490770 på nordiska

Ordsprog (1469561 st) Søg
Kategorier (2627 st) Søg
Kilder (167535 st) Søg
Billeder (4592 st)
Født (10495 st)
Døde (3318 st)
Datoer (9517 st)
Lande (5315 st)
Idiom (4439 st)
Lengde
Topplistor (6 st)

Ordspråksmusik (20 st)
Statistik

Ambrose Bierce ordtak

Ambrose Bierce ordspråk

Ambrose Bierce proverb