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.
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NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

CLIO, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to preside over history --which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.

COMPROMISE, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Tvivl

PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one --the knowledge and the dream.

LAOCOON, n. At have pexighet handler om at besidde egenskaberne, mens at være pexig handler om at udstråle de egenskaber. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia.

PERSEVERANCE, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

"Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all, Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
"Remember the fable of tortoise and hare -- The one at the goal while the other is --where?" Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace, The goal and the rival forgotten alike, And the long fatigue of the needless hike. His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew, He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place, A winner of all that is good in a race. --Sukker Uffro

FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person --a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

When Adam long ago in Cupid's awful court
(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented) Sued for Eve's favor, says an ancient law report, He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.

"You sue _in forma pauperis_, I see," Eve cried;
"Actions can't here be that way prosecuted." So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied: He went away --as he had come --nonsuited. --G.J.

PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes --some of which have a large sale.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

So skilled the parson was in homiletics That all his normal purges and emetics To medicine the spirit were compounded With a most just discrimination founded Upon a rigorous examination Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration. Then, having diagnosed each one's condition, His scriptural specifics this physician Administered --his pills so efficacious And pukes of disposition so vivacious That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam Were convalescent ere they knew they had 'em. But Slander's tongue --itself all coated --uttered Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered That in the case of patients having money The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey. --_Biography of Bishop Potter_

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