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.

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.

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

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

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

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.

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

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...

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.