1415 ordspråk av Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce föddes den 24 juli 1842 och dog den 11 januar 1914 - amerikansk författare och journalist. Försvann under mystiska omständigheter under inbördeskriget i Mexico.
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Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Uppskattning

OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.

LOQUACITY, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.

EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.

SEAL, n. A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest their authenticity and authority. Sometimes it is stamped upon wax, and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy independent of the authority that they represent. In the British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are appended now. As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense evolving in the process of ages into something really useful. Our word "sincere" is derived from _sine cero_, without wax, but the learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were formerly closed from public scrutiny. Either view of the matter will serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis. The initials L.S., commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean _locum sigillis_, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used
--an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the beasts that perish. The words _locum sigillis_ are humbly suggested as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.

SMITHAREEN, n. A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain. The word is used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil" it is seen at its best:

The wheels go round without a sound -- The maidens hold high revel; In sinful mood, insanely gay, True spinsters spin adown the way From duty to the devil! They laugh, they sing, and --ting-a-ling! Their bells go all the morning; Their lanterns bright bestar the night Pedestrians a-warning. With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands, Good-Lording and O-mying, Her rheumatism forgotten quite, Her fat with anger frying. She blocks the path that leads to wrath, Jack Satan's power defying. The wheels go round without a sound The lights burn red and blue and green. What's this that's found upon the ground? Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen! --John William Yope

SYLPH, n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious. Sylphs, like fowls of the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they had progeny they must have nested in accessible places, none of the chicks having ever been seen.

SYMBOL, n. Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere "survivals" --things which having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.

SYMBOLIC, adj. Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation of symbols.

They say 'tis conscience feels compunction; I hold that that's the stomach's function, For of the sinner I have noted That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated, Or ill some other ghastly fashion Within that bowel of compassion. True, I believe the only sinner Is he that eats a shabby dinner. You know how Adam with good reason, For eating apples out of season, Was "cursed." But that is all symbolic: The truth is, Adam had the colic.

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. Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once was. This tendency is most observable in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong and persistent. The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan past.

TALK, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.

TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

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Linkene lenger ned har ikke blitt oversatt till norsk. Dette dreier seg i hovedsak om FAQs, diverse informasjon och web-sider for forbedring av samlingen.

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