Ambrose Bierce

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

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Love and Hate and  Success and Failure

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Health and Disease and  Life and Death

Beauty: That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Life and Death and  Men and Women

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Law and Politics

Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Altruism and Cynicism

Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Altruism and Cynicism

Egoist: A person of low taste, more interested in themselves than in me.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Altruism and Cynicism

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Altruism and Cynicism

Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Law and Politics

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

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Wealth and Poverty

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Wisdom and Ignorance

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Wisdom and Ignorance

Coward: one who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Vice and Virtue and  War and Peace

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Law and Politics

Helpmate: A wife, or bitter half.

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Love and Hate

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, "patriotism" is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Law and Politics

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

 Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in  Love and Hate

It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Vice and Virtue

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Wisdom and Ignorance

The covers of this book are too far apart.

 Ambrose Bierce, in  Altruism and Cynicism