“A Highwayman confronted a Traveler, and covering him with a firearm shouted: ‘Your money or your life!’  

“’My good friend,’ said the Traveler, ‘according to the terms of your demand my money will save my life, my life my money; you imply that you will take one or the other, but not both.  If that is what you mean please be good enough to take my life.’  

“’That is not what I mean,’ said the Highwayman; ‘ you cannot save your money by giving up your life.’

“’Then take it anyhow.’ the Traveler said. ‘If it will not save my money it is good for nothing.’

“’The Highwayman was so pleased with the Traveler’s philosophy and wit that he took him into partnership and with this splendid combination of talent started a newspaper.”

                                                              Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce, pg. 606







The following tongue-in-cheek definitions are from The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) by Ambrose Bierce. 



Absurdity. n  “A statement of belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.” 

Commerce. n.  “A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.”

Corporation. n.  “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”

Clergyman. n.  “ A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.”

Evangelist. n. “A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.”   

History. n.  “An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.” 

Interpreter. n. “One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.”  

Lawful. adj.  “Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.”

Lawyer. n.  “One skilled in circumvention of the law.”     

Liberty. n. “One of imagination's most precious possessions.  
                          The rising People, hot and out of breath, 
                          Roared around the palace: ‘Liberty or death!’
                         ‘If death will do,’ the king said, ‘let me reign”
                         ‘You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain’
                                                                       Martha Braymance”  

Litigant. n.  “A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.”

Litigation. n.  “A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”

Mammon. n.  “The god of the world’s leading religion.  His chief temple is in the holy city of New York.  He swore all other religions were gammon, And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon. Jared Oopf.”

Patriot. n.  “One to who the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole.  The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.”

Patriotism. n. “Combustible rubbish ready to torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.  In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of scoundrels.  With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.”     

Philosophy. n.  “A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.”

Push. n. “One of the two things mainly conductive to success, especially in politics.  The other is Pull”

Religion. n.  “A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Un-knowable.”

Reason. v. “To weigh probabilities in the scale of desire.”

Reasonable. adj.  “Accessible to the infections of our own opinion.  Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.”

Vote. n.  The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
 
  Till He fill thy mouth 
              with laughing...                                              
                    
                                               Job 8:21    ... my personal favorite!