LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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BABE or 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. There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being preserved on a floating lotus leaf.Ere babes were invented The girls were contended. Now man is tormented Until to buy babes he has squandered His money. And so I have pondered This thing, and thought may be'T were better that Baby The First had been eagled or condored. --Ro Amil
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Projectile - n. the final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these disputes were resolved by physical contact of the disputants with such arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times would supply - sword, spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by all. Its capital defect ( in Bierce's day ) has been that it requires personal attendance at the point of launch.
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Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
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Dead power is everywhere among us—in the forest, chopping down the songs; at night in the industrial landscape, wasting and stiffening the n...
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Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
Sports
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pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department.
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HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.O bury the hatchet, irascible Red, For peace is a blessing, the White Man said. The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred, With imposing rites, in the White Man's head. --John Lukkus
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Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
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Rock n' Roll will be gone by June.
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I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plain I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
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Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Marriage
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If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
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I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup. I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer, and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what he's got to do.
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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.
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Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like n...
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For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not remind us of intelligent human design. 'If a man in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather - assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence.'
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All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind. The bass was charging me. And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble.
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Rock 'n Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.
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For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night and slaverly which would last till Christ comes again--which I hope he will n
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Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.
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Etymology, n.:
Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term 'etymology' was formed from the Latin 'etus' ('eaten'), the root 'mal' ('bad'), and 'logy' ('study of'). It meant 'the study of things that are hard to swallow.'
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I may be gone, but rock n roll lives on.
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Clone, n 1. an exact duplicate, as in 'our product is a clone of their product.' 2. a shoddy, spurious copy, as in 'their product is a clone of our product'.
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The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap?
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I wish more and more that health were studied half as much as disease is. Why, with all the endowment of research against cancer is no study m...
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In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity -- or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity -- by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
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There is no wisdom without love.
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Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
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Before the Beatles ever got big, we started out playing rock 'n' roll at The Cavern. I'm going back as a nod to the music that has always -- and will ever -- thrill me,
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