Passion

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  • Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
        Wernher von Braun   Best?
  • We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 290,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
        Andy Rooney   Best?
  • That ready wit, which you so partially allow me, ... may create many admirers; but, take my word for it, it makes few friends. It shines and dazzles like the noonday sun, but, like that, too, it is very apt to scorch, and therefore is always feared. The milder morning and evening light and heat of that planet soothe and calm our minds. Never seek for wit; if it present itself, well and good; but even then, let your judgement interpose, and take care that it be not at the expense of anybody.
        Philip Dormer Stanhope   Best?
  • D'ya think the rain'll hurt the rhubarb?
        Muriel Strode   Best?
  • Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know.
        Rita Mae Brown   Best?
  • Without a doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.
        Lord Samuel   Best?
  • TROGLODYTE, n. Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic period, after the Tree and before the Flat. A famous community of troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam. The colony consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented" -- in brief, all the Socialists of Judah.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • 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.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • SCIMETAR, n. A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the incident here related will serve to show. The account is translated from the Japanese by Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth century.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • RECONSIDER, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • RADIUM, n. A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ that a scientist is a fool with.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • QUILL, n. 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   Best?
  • POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When we wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane. They have had to concede a few things since the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to be conceded hereafter.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • OLYMPIAN, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • LEVIATHAN, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (_Thaddeus Polandensis_) or Polliwig -- _Maria pseudo-hirsuta_. For an exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, _Thaddeus of Warsaw_.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • HEAT, n.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number -- just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. Following is the revised edition of the Decalogue, calculated for this meridian.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • APPETITE, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • I want all hellions to quit puffing that hell fume in God's clean air.
        Carry Nation   Best?
  • To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
        Simone Weil   Best?
  • Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.
        Edna Ferber   Best?
  • My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.
        Phyllis Diller   Best?
  • If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
        Harry S. Truman   Best?
  • The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination.
        Tommy Lasorda   Best?
  • The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.
        Doug Larson   Best?
  • We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
        Marianne Moore   Best?
  • There is not a flower or bird in sight, only a small screen on which lines are moving, while the child sits almost motionless, pushing at the keyboard with one finger. As a learning environment, it may be mentally rich, but it is perceptually extremely impoverished. No smells or tastes, no wind or bird song (unless the computer is programmed to produce electronic tweets), no connection with soil, water, sunlight, warmth, the actual learning environment is almost autistic in quality, impoverished sensually, emotionally, and socially.
        John Davy   Best?
  • To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
        Horace Mann   Best?

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