“Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.”
“Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.”
“Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.”
“Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”
“Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.”
“Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.”
“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.”
“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”
“Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a ''joke.''”
“Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.”
“Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.”
“Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.”
“Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.”
“Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.”
“Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”
“An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
“Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.”
“Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.”
“What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.”
“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.”
“Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.”
“Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.”
“Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.”