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RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.

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
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Prosecuting
Expectations
Enable
Hostilities
Break
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Sentenced
Whether
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Assassin
May
Executive
Respite
Done
Expectation
Assassins
Executives
Suspension
Murder
Disagreeable

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Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
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MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.
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ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long.
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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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Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
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True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
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NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
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Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
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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.
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A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
Ambrose Bierce
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Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Ambrose Bierce
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PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
Ambrose Bierce
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BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPLICA, n. A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a copy, which is made by another artist. When the two are mae with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is suppose
Ambrose Bierce
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TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Ambrose Bierce
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OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment . . . . judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it.
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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar tumble-bug. It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.
Ambrose Bierce
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EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.
Ambrose Bierce