Quotations, aphorisms and proverbs with their sources

PROOF-READER: A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PROOF-READER

MENDACIOUS: Addicted to rhetoric.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MENDACIOUS

PRESENTABLE: Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PRESENTABLE

QUILL: An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · QUILL

LINEN: "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp."—Calcraft the Hangman.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LINEN

DEBT: An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DEBT

DELIBERATION: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DELIBERATION

LIVER: A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte." It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name—liver, the thing we live with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LIVER

MEERSCHAUM: (Literally, seafoam, and by many erroneously supposed to be made of it.) A fine white clay, which for convenience in coloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmen engaged in that industry. The purpose of coloring it has not been disclosed by the manufacturers.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MEERSCHAUM

DEGRADATION: One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DEGRADATION

DEFAME: To lie about another. To tell the truth about another.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DEFAME

EAVESDROP: Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · EAVESDROP

LOCK-AND-KEY: The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LOCK-AND-KEY

PROJECTILE: The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply—the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PROJECTILE

LITIGANT: A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LITIGANT

LIMB: The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LIMB

PROBOSCIS: The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PROBOSCIS

PIE: An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PIE

MACE: A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MACE

PHYSICIAN: One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PHYSICIAN

PUBLISH: In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in a cone of critics.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PUBLISH

PUSH: One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PUSH

LOOKING-GLASS: A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LOOKING-GLASS

PHYSIOGNOMY: The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PHYSIOGNOMY