• A rabbit’s foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
• Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
• Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
• Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
• Accountability: The mother of caution.
• Accuse: To affirm another’s guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
• Achievement; the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
• Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
• A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
• Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.
• Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
• Advice: n. to seek another’s approval of a course already decided upon.
• Advice: The suggestions you give someone else which you hope will work for your benefit.
• Age: That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
• 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. Ambrose Bierce
• Alone, adj. In bad company.
• Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
• An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
• Amnesty, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
• Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
• Aphorism, n. Predigested wisdom.
• Apologize: Lay the foundation for a future offense.
• In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
• Applause, n. The echo of a platitude.
• Archbishop: An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
• One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
• Baby, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
• Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
• Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
• Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
• Beg, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.
• Beggar, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
• Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
• Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
• Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
• Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think.
• Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
• Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.
• Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
• Callous, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
• Cannon, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
• Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, author of ‘Cogito ergo sum’ to demonstrate the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved ‘Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum’ ‘I think that I think, therefore I think that I am’ as close an approach.
• Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
• Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
• Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
• Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet ; two clarinets.
• Comfort, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.
• Commendation, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.
• 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.
• Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
• Congratulation: The civility of envy.
• Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
• Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
• Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
• Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
• Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.
• Convent – a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
• Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
• Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
• Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
• Crayfish, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.
• Critic: One who boasts of being “hard to please” because nobody tries to please him.
• Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
• Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
• Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
• Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
• Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
• Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
• Decide, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.
• Delegation: In American politics an article of merchandise that comes in sets.
• Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
• Democracy: Four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
• Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coin out of your pocket.
• Diagnosis, n. A physician’s forecast of disease by the patient’s pulse and purse.
• Diaphragm, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.
• Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic
• Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
• Diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
• Discriminate, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
• Discussion, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.
• Disobedience, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
• Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.
• Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
• Dog – a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.
• Eat, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
• Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
• Edible – good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
• Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
• Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
• Egotist : A person more interested in himself than in me.
• Egotist: A person of low taste – more interested in himself than in me.
• 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.
• Enthusiasm – a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
• Envy, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
• Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
• Erudition – dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
• Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
• Evangelist, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
• Exception, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.
• Exile, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.
• Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
• Experience: the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
• Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
• Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
• Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
• Fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.
• Fidelity – a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
• Folly, n. That “gift and faculty divine” whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
• Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
• Friendship: A ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
• FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs.
• That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
• Genius – to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
• Glutton – A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.
• Gnu, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.
• Gout, a physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
• Gratitude, n. A sentiment lying midway between a benefit received and a benefit expected.
• GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
• Gunpowder, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.
• Habit: A shackle for the free.
• Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.
• Happiness : An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
• Hatred, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s superiority.
• Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
• Hedgehog : The cactus of the animal Kingdom .
• Historian – a broad-gauge gossip.
• History is an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools.
• Homesick: Dead broke abroad.
• Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
• Hospitality, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
• Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.
• Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.
• Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
• Ignoramus, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
• Imagination, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership. Ambrose Bierce
• Impartial – unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
• Your irreverence toward my deity.
• Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.
• Ink, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.
• 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. Ambrose Bierce
• Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
• Justice is a commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.
• KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
• Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
• n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for “bliss”.
• Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
• Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
• Lap, n. One of the most important organs of the female system – an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.
• Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
• Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
• Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
• Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
• Lecturer, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
• Liar, n. One who tells an unpleasant truth.
• Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.
• LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed.
• A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
• Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
• Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
• Longevity: Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
• Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
• Lottery: A tax on stupidity.
• Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
• Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
• Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin.
• Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
• Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
• Martyr: One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
• Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.
• Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
• Miss, n. A title which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.
• A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
• Monkey, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.
• Moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.
• Mouse, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.
• Neighbour, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
• Nirvana- In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.
• Noise, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
• Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.
• Opera n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
• Opportunity is a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
• Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
• Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
• Outdo: To make an enemy.
• Overeat, v. To dine. Ambrose Bierce.
• Pain, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
• Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
• Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
• 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…. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream.
• Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
• Patriotism: The first resort of a scoundrel.
• Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
• Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting
• Perfection, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
• Perseverance – a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
• Pessimism: A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. Ambrose Bierce
• Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
• Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
• Phonograph, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
• Photograph, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as that of a Cheyenne.
• Physician, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
• Pie, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
• Pitiful, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
• Plagiarize, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
• Plan: To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
• Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
• Plunder, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.
• Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
• Politician, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
• Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
• Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
• Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
• Predestination, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
• Preference, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
• Prejudice – a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
• Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
• Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope. Ambrose Bierce
• Price, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
• Proof, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one.
• Prospect, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually forbidden.
• Pun: A form of wit, to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.
• Push, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.
• Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.
• Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
• Radicalism, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.
• Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
• Reason, n. Propensitate of prejudice.
• Reason, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
• Reasonable, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion. Ambrose Bierce
• Recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.
• Reconciliation, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.
• Recount, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.
• Recreation, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
• Referendum, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
• A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
• Reporter, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
• Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
• Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
• Ridicule, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.
• Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
• Rumor, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
• Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
• Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one’s own.
• Scriptures: The sacred books of our holy religion as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
• Self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisal.
• Self-evident, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.
• Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
• Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
• Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
• Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.
• Story, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.
• Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
• Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
• Take, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
• Tariff: A scale of taxes on imports designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
• Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
• Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure
• A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
• Truce, n. Friendship.
• Truth – An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
• Truthful, adj. Dumb and illiterate.
• Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
• War: God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
• Wit – the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
• A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
• Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
• Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
• Yesterday: The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.
• Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.

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• A rabbit’s foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
• A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
• Democracy: A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
• Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
• The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.
• All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
• An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
• An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
• Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.
• Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
• God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
• I think I think, therefore I think I am.
• If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
• In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
• In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman’s heart.
• It is evident that scepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
• Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
• Take not God’s name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
• The covers of this book are too far apart.
• The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
• The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
• The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.
• There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.
• There would be far fewer accidents if we could only teach telephone poles to be more careful.
• A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can’t let go.
• They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
• True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
• Truth is so good a thing that falsehood cannot afford to be without it.
• We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
• What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.
• What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
• When you have made a catalogue of your friend’s faults it is only fair to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.
• Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

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Thoughts on doubt

• A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
• Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
• Doubt is the father of invention.
• Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
• Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
• Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is – it is her shadow.

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Final thoughts

• Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.
• Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation-it is fond of killing-patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.
• A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
• A popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.

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