"Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors."

"Edible - 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."

"Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure."

"Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white."

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."

"Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward."

"Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country."

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

"Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another."

"The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge."

"Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world."

"A man is known by the company he organizes."

"The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations."

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

"Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions."

"Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly."

"Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly."

"It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better."

"Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion."

"Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age."

"What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends."

"Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed."

"Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance."

"Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you."

"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage."

"Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

"Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions."

"Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends."

"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility."

"Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized."

"Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while."

"Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state."

"Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."

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

"Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her."

"Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh."

"Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead."

"Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination."

"Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow."

"Historian - a broad-gauge gossip."

"Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name."

"Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."

"Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure."

"Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage."

"Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence."

"Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul."