Category: Thought

Incompossible, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both — as Walt Whitman’s poetry and God’s mercy to man.

Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

Liberty, n. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

Three entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), known by the nom de plume “Voltaire,” Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, “Money” (1770).

The Apollo 17 Lunar Module and its crew of astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, landed at Taurus–Littrow, a lunar valley, on December 11, 1972, becoming the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon. Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans orbited above, never to land on the lunar surface. Evans died in 1990; Cernan in 2017; Schmitt, a former U.S. senator (N.M.), survives at age 89.

Advice, n. The smallest current coin.

Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.

Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

Four entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is — a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness.

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Chapter 22.

When a prisoner of style escapes it’s called an evasion.

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Chapter 39.

If our government knows anything about these devices, the people should be told at once. A lot of people out here are very much disturbed. Some think these things may be from another planet. But they aren’t harming anyone and I think it would be the wrong thing to shoot one of them down — even if it can be done. Their high speed would completely wreck them.

Kenneth Arnold, as quoted in “‘Flying discs’ called real by 2 air veterans,” Chicago Times (July 7, 1947). Businessman and aviator Arnold had reported seeing nine mysterious flying objects speeding by Mount Rainier in Washington State, on June 24, and thereby starting the modern UFO craze.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Book III, Ch. 13 (1595).

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (1978).

Opulent, civilized, and industrious nations, are greater consumers than poor ones, because they are infinitely greater producers.

Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition, 1832), Book III, “On Consumption,” Chapter 1.