History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Doubt is the father of invention.

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

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.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.

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

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

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.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

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

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

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.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.