Great Throughts Treasury

"Discussion, n. A method of confirming others in their errors."

"Digestion, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead?a circumstance from which that wicked writer, dr. Jeremiah blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia."

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

"Disobedience, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude."

"Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship."

"Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat."

"Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries."

"Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible."

"Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat."

"Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth."

"Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."

"Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."

"Eat, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition."

"Edible, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm."

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

"Effect, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a cause, is said to generate the other?which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog."

"Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of its economical application to some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a horse."

"Electricity, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career. The memory of dr. Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in france, where a waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition, bearing the following touching account of his life and services to science:"

"Embalm, v.t. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his glut‘us maximus."

"Emotion, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes."

"Enthusiasm, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience."

"Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect."

"Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

"Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age."

"Ethnology, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists."

"Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead."

"Faith. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast."

"Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey."

"Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated."

"Fidelity, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed."

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

"Female, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex."

"Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours."

"Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience."

"Freemasons, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids ? always by a Freemason."

"Freebooter, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude."

"Friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense."

"Frog, n. A reptile with edible legs"

"Friendship: A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul."

"Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own."

"From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque. He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live! (A Tough Tussle)"

"Geology, n. The science of the earth's crust ?to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: the primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones of mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, spanish doubloons and ancestors. The secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools."

"Generous, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest."

"God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past."

"Gnu, n. An animal of south africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone."

"Ghost: The outward and visible sign of an inward fear."

"Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction."

"Good-bye ? if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico ? ah, that is euthanasia."

"Goose, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed."