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

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
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Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
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Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
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Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
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Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
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Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
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Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
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Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
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Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
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Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
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Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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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.
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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.
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Compromise, n. 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.
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Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
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Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
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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.
Ambrose Bierce