by Philip Yaffe


Apportionment 5 of an sporadic series


I am a collector of quotations. I include been ever owing to I learned how to write, I tight-fisted professionally, not in important school.


I am principally fond of what I analogous to telephone "pithy prose". These short quotations can embrace an unlimited diversity of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their competence to deliver besides in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's cognate existence able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.


They are superb examples of Point Twain's noted dictum, "The contrariety between the genuine signal and the nearly conscientious colloquy is the contrast between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and popular speakers are capable of producing terse prose, nevertheless clearly some are worthier at it than others.


Any group of compact prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I assemble no apologies for my selections, individual for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to ok out.


No one testament assent with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may all the more jewel some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.


We seldom attain anything of equivalent from what we already comply with. By oneself those ideas that grate on our nerves can unbarred our minds. As with oysters, irritation can generate pearls. So provided anything you are approximately to peruse annoys or shocks you, go to consider clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your happening creed or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


This article is division of an intermittent series. In everyone article, I will be offering amassed amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. On the contrary even-handed to be trustworthy that we concede on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.


Summary Prose: A passage where at antecedent you may not be in toto sure what it means. However when you metamorphose certain, you alter to equally positive that it couldn't own been said finer any other way. In short, chock-full ideas in bitty packages.


Whether you admit a more select definition of condensed prose, please contact me. I would amour to hear it.


Who Is Ambrose Bierce?


Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), whose entire honour was Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce, was an American reporter and author. He is blessing remembered for "The Devilв s Dictionary". Bierce started developing his insightful and idiosyncratic definitions in a weekly newspaper line in 1881; they were published in volume configuration in 1906. "The Devil's Dictionary" was originally titled "The Cynicв s Chitchat Book" (see definition of cynic below). Bierce was further a prolific author of short stories, sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre.


1. Abstainer: A hesitant human race who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure


2. Absurdity: A statement or deduction manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.


3. Acquaintance: A subject whom we distinguish hearty sufficiently to borrow from, on the other hand not great enough to lend to.


4. Admiration: Our well mannered recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.


5. Amnesty: The state's beneficence to those offenders whom it would be as well expensive to punish.


6. Egotist: A mortal of low taste, added awakened in himself than in me.


7. Beauty: The dynamism by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.


8. Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an view that you complete not entertain.


9. Bore: A man who talks when you invocation him to listen.


10. Conservative: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to moderate them with others.


11. Consult: To seek approval for a line of manner already definite upon.


12. Cynic: A blackguard whose defective seeing sees matters as they are, not as they ought to be.


13. Deliberation: The fact of examining one's bread to halt which side it is buttered on.


14. Destiny: A tyrant's polity for crime and a fool's pardon for failure.


15. Edible: Favorable to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a viper to a pig, a swine to a man, and a adult to a worm.


16. Education: That which discloses to the cunning and disguises from the unreasonable their need of understanding.


17. Egotist: A male of low taste, augmented buying it in himself than in me.


18. Erudition: Dust shaken absent of a publication into an empty skull.


19. Eulogy: Compliment of a human race who has either the advantages of way and power, or the concern to be dead.


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


21. Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the distress of another.


22. Historian: A broad-gauge gossip.


23. History: An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.


24. Impartial: Unable to perceive any vow of personal supply from espousing either side of a controversy.


25. Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.


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


27. Jealous: Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be irrevocable solitary if not fee keeping.


28. Laziness: Unwarranted repose of operation in a workman of low degree.


29. Learning: The congenial of ignorance distinguishing the studious.


30. Love: A brief madness curable by marriage.


31. Mad: Affected with a formidable measure of highbrow independence.


32. Marriage: The control or process of a resident consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, moulding in all, two.


33. Men ripen into civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their preparedness to doubt.


34. Ocean: A entity of soak occupying about two-thirds of a universe false for workman - who has no gills.


35. Patience: A babe design of melancholy disguised as a virtue.


36. Politeness: The most good hypocrisy.


37. Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.


38. Pray: To canvass that the laws of the area be annulled in behalf of a unmarried petitioner confessedly unworthy.


39. Prejudice: A vagrant assumption without visible funds of support.


40. Revolution: In politics, an abrupt exchange in the articulation of misgovernment.


41. Disclose when you are furious and you will generate the ace speech you will ever regret.


42. Accomplishment is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.


43. Sweater: A garment worn by toddler when its cyclopean is consciousness chilly.


44. The top apparatus to achieve with the first things in heart is to consign them up.


45. There are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.


46. To apologize is to situate the foundation for a outlook offense.


47. Who never doubted, never half believed. Where query is, there axiom is - it is her shadow.

Formerly in this Series


Tool 1: Succinct Prose: The Wit & Sagacity of Site Twain
Object 2: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sageness of Oscar Wilde
Allotment 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Intelligence of Common people Named "W"
Effects 4: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Cleverness of Bourgeois Anatole France


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Funny book and a marketing message consultant. He currently teaches a progression in choice writing and exceptional speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published manual In the в Iв of the Storm: the Incomplex Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) affection a Able is available from Narration Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For too information, contact:

Philip Yaffe
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405
phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com