The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce: Short Quotes

Houseless — having paid all taxes on household goods.

Kleptomaniac — a rich thief.

Russian — a person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.

Success — the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.

Philosophy — a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Archbishop — an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

Envy — emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

Hearse — Death's baby-carriage.

Hermit — a person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

Respectability — the offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

Liberty — one of Imagination's most precious possessions.

Litigation — a machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Litigant — a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

Labor — one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

Hurry — the dispatch of bunglers.