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INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

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
Influence
Immediate
Causes
Performance
Performances
Sense
Intention
Another
Effect
Prevalence
Mind
Whose
Involuntary
Effects
Remote
Cause
Influences

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Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.
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Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
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GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
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MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
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Liberty is one of the imagination's most precious possessions.
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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.
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CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
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OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
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INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.
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GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
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In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference.
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Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call war and commerce. These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.
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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.
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PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.
Ambrose Bierce
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A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
Ambrose Bierce
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CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.
Ambrose Bierce
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Ambrose Bierce
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EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
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J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, jacere, to throw, because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.
Ambrose Bierce