Succinct Prose: The Wit Intelligence of Ambrose Bierce
Articulation 5 of an intermittent series
I am a collector of quotations. I own been ever because I learned how to write, I niggardly professionally, not in valuable school.
I am exceptionally fond of what I allying to phone "pithy prose". These short quotations can involve an unlimited diversity of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their faculty to deliver besides in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's commensurate life able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.
They are superb examples of Site Twain's noted dictum, "The contrariness between the genuine signal and the nearly honest tete-a-tete is the contrariety between lightning and a lightning bug."
In principle, all writers and regular speakers are capable of producing terse prose, on the contrary clearly some are greater at it than others.
Any assemblage of concise prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I cook up no apologies for my selections, matchless for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to authorization out.
No one testament concur with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may much acquisition some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.
We seldom cram anything of reward from what we already coincide with. One those ideas that grate on our nerves can manage our minds. As with oysters, irritation can constitute pearls. So whether anything you are approximately to glance at annoys or shocks you, pop to expect clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your ongoing feeling or shaken into re-examining it.
Either way, you win!
This article is item of an odd series. In everyone article, I will be offering another amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. Nevertheless decent to be persuaded that we give blessing on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.
Condensed Prose: A citation where at antecedent you may not be largely sure what it means. However when you change into certain, you shift equally trustworthy that it couldn't gain been said choice any other way. In short, burly ideas in little packages.
Provided you chalk up a improved definition of compact prose, please contact me. I would amorousness to hear it.
Who Is Ambrose Bierce?
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), whose filled brand was Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce, was an American reporter and author. He is crowing remembered for "The Devil's Dictionary". Bierce started developing his insightful and idiosyncratic definitions in a weekly newspaper contour in 1881; they were published in volume die in 1906. "The Devil's Dictionary" was originally titled "The Cynic's Conversation Book" (see definition of cynic below). Bierce was too a prolific author of short stories, sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre.
1. Abstainer: A enervated workman who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure
2. Absurdity: A statement or thought manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
3. Acquaintance: A adult whom we discern chipper sufficiently to borrow from, on the other hand not flourishing 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 extremely expensive to punish.
6. Egotist: A subject of low taste, enhanced attracted in himself than in me.
7. Beauty: The authority by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
8. Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an guess that you bring about not entertain.
9. Bore: A male who talks when you demand him to listen.
10. Conservative: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to modify them with others.
11. Consult: To seek approval for a circuit of activity already sure upon.
12. Cynic: A blackguard whose defective sight sees matters as they are, not as they ought to be.
13. Deliberation: The circumstance of examining one's bread to fix upon which side it is buttered on.
14. Destiny: A tyrant's management for crime and a fool's pardon for failure.
15. Edible: Acceptable 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 person to a worm.
16. Education: That which discloses to the discreet and disguises from the unreasonable their inadequacy of understanding.
17. Egotist: A workman of low taste, else fired in himself than in me.
18. Erudition: Dust shaken gone of a album into an empty skull.
19. Eulogy: Compliment of a man who has either the advantages of cash and power, or the affliction to be dead.
20. Faith: Opinion 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 overhaul from espousing either side of a controversy.
25. Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.
26. Inventor: A human race 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 invisible one shot if not value keeping.
28. Laziness: Unwarranted repose of operation in a mortal of low degree.
29. Learning: The altruistic of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
30. Love: A fleeting madness curable by marriage.
31. Mad: Affected with a alpine measure of highbrow independence.
32. Marriage: The homeland or action of a regional consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, forming in all, two.
33. Men grow into civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their preparedness to doubt.
34. Ocean: A target of hose occupying about two-thirds of a star fabricated for subject - who has no gills.
35. Patience: A youngster fashion of dejection disguised as a virtue.
36. Politeness: The most worthy hypocrisy.
37. Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
38. Pray: To inquire that the laws of the field be annulled in behalf of a unmarried petitioner confessedly unworthy.
39. Prejudice: A vagrant attitude without visible method of support.
40. Revolution: In politics, an abrupt spending money in the arrangement of misgovernment.
41. Claim when you are fit to be tied and you will arrange the first-class speech you will ever regret.
42. Flying colors is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
43. Sweater: A garment worn by minor when its jumbo is activity chilly.
44. The choicest configuration to arrange with the first-rate things in excitement is to confer them up.
45. There are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
46. To apologize is to deposit the foundation for a prospect offense.
47. Who never doubted, never half believed. Where question is, there exactitude is - it is her shadow.
Formerly in this Series
Tool 1: Summary Prose: The Wit & Erudition of Objective Twain
Thing 2: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sageness of Oscar Wilde
Factor 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sagacity of Persons Named "W"
Cut 4: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Cleverness of Body politic Anatole France
Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Magazine and a marketing indication consultant. He currently teaches a trail in excellent writing and pleasant speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published notebook In the "I" of the Storm: the Effortless Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) approximative a Finished is available from Novel Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).
For extremely information, contact:
Philip Yaffe
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405
phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com
I am a collector of quotations. I own been ever because I learned how to write, I niggardly professionally, not in valuable school.
I am exceptionally fond of what I allying to phone "pithy prose". These short quotations can involve an unlimited diversity of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their faculty to deliver besides in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's commensurate life able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.
They are superb examples of Site Twain's noted dictum, "The contrariness between the genuine signal and the nearly honest tete-a-tete is the contrariety between lightning and a lightning bug."
In principle, all writers and regular speakers are capable of producing terse prose, on the contrary clearly some are greater at it than others.
Any assemblage of concise prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I cook up no apologies for my selections, matchless for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to authorization out.
No one testament concur with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may much acquisition some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.
We seldom cram anything of reward from what we already coincide with. One those ideas that grate on our nerves can manage our minds. As with oysters, irritation can constitute pearls. So whether anything you are approximately to glance at annoys or shocks you, pop to expect clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your ongoing feeling or shaken into re-examining it.
Either way, you win!
This article is item of an odd series. In everyone article, I will be offering another amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. Nevertheless decent to be persuaded that we give blessing on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.
Condensed Prose: A citation where at antecedent you may not be largely sure what it means. However when you change into certain, you shift equally trustworthy that it couldn't gain been said choice any other way. In short, burly ideas in little packages.
Provided you chalk up a improved definition of compact prose, please contact me. I would amorousness to hear it.
Who Is Ambrose Bierce?
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), whose filled brand was Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce, was an American reporter and author. He is crowing remembered for "The Devil's Dictionary". Bierce started developing his insightful and idiosyncratic definitions in a weekly newspaper contour in 1881; they were published in volume die in 1906. "The Devil's Dictionary" was originally titled "The Cynic's Conversation Book" (see definition of cynic below). Bierce was too a prolific author of short stories, sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre.
1. Abstainer: A enervated workman who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure
2. Absurdity: A statement or thought manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
3. Acquaintance: A adult whom we discern chipper sufficiently to borrow from, on the other hand not flourishing 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 extremely expensive to punish.
6. Egotist: A subject of low taste, enhanced attracted in himself than in me.
7. Beauty: The authority by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
8. Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an guess that you bring about not entertain.
9. Bore: A male who talks when you demand him to listen.
10. Conservative: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to modify them with others.
11. Consult: To seek approval for a circuit of activity already sure upon.
12. Cynic: A blackguard whose defective sight sees matters as they are, not as they ought to be.
13. Deliberation: The circumstance of examining one's bread to fix upon which side it is buttered on.
14. Destiny: A tyrant's management for crime and a fool's pardon for failure.
15. Edible: Acceptable 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 person to a worm.
16. Education: That which discloses to the discreet and disguises from the unreasonable their inadequacy of understanding.
17. Egotist: A workman of low taste, else fired in himself than in me.
18. Erudition: Dust shaken gone of a album into an empty skull.
19. Eulogy: Compliment of a man who has either the advantages of cash and power, or the affliction to be dead.
20. Faith: Opinion 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 overhaul from espousing either side of a controversy.
25. Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.
26. Inventor: A human race 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 invisible one shot if not value keeping.
28. Laziness: Unwarranted repose of operation in a mortal of low degree.
29. Learning: The altruistic of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
30. Love: A fleeting madness curable by marriage.
31. Mad: Affected with a alpine measure of highbrow independence.
32. Marriage: The homeland or action of a regional consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, forming in all, two.
33. Men grow into civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their preparedness to doubt.
34. Ocean: A target of hose occupying about two-thirds of a star fabricated for subject - who has no gills.
35. Patience: A youngster fashion of dejection disguised as a virtue.
36. Politeness: The most worthy hypocrisy.
37. Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
38. Pray: To inquire that the laws of the field be annulled in behalf of a unmarried petitioner confessedly unworthy.
39. Prejudice: A vagrant attitude without visible method of support.
40. Revolution: In politics, an abrupt spending money in the arrangement of misgovernment.
41. Claim when you are fit to be tied and you will arrange the first-class speech you will ever regret.
42. Flying colors is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
43. Sweater: A garment worn by minor when its jumbo is activity chilly.
44. The choicest configuration to arrange with the first-rate things in excitement is to confer them up.
45. There are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
46. To apologize is to deposit the foundation for a prospect offense.
47. Who never doubted, never half believed. Where question is, there exactitude is - it is her shadow.
Formerly in this Series
Tool 1: Summary Prose: The Wit & Erudition of Objective Twain
Thing 2: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sageness of Oscar Wilde
Factor 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sagacity of Persons Named "W"
Cut 4: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Cleverness of Body politic Anatole France
Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Magazine and a marketing indication consultant. He currently teaches a trail in excellent writing and pleasant speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published notebook In the "I" of the Storm: the Effortless Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) approximative a Finished is available from Novel Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).
For extremely information, contact:
Philip Yaffe
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405
phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com
From materials of: http://articlebin.com/view-Pithy_Prose__The_Wit__Wisdom_of_A~.html
Published: June 9, 2008
Published: June 9, 2008
Keywords:
prose,
prose wit,
pithy prose,
succinct prose,
prose citation,
prose short,
prose necessarily,
prose please,
prose clearly,
condensed prose
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