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RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.

Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Poet
Regulate
Imagination
Secretly
Water
Mystic
Used
Rice
Novelists
Poets
Popular
Beverage
Conscience
Beverages

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MULTITUDE, n. A crowd the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.
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A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
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UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.
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PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
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Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.
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IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
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Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
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Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own.
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PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
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Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
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The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.
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Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
Ambrose Bierce
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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
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Christian - One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
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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.
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TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
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Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
Ambrose Bierce
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HEART, n. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments . . . . It is now known that sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid.
Ambrose Bierce
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REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.
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In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally damned. The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.
Ambrose Bierce