The Only Animl that Plays Poker

Image via Wikipedia

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. – Ambrose Bierce




True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table: luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home. – John Hay



There is enough energy wasted in poker to make a hundred thousand successful every year. – Arthur Brisbane



Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich – something for nothing. – George Bernard Shaw



Man is the only animal that plays poker. – Don Herold



It doesn’t say much for society, if gambling is the main method of raising money for good causes. – Bertram Troy

Related articles

• Show-off: 22-year-old ex-poker player makes our life seem boring (shortformblog.com)
• Banker Who Left Citigroup To Play Poker Just Won $1.3 Million At WSOP (C) (businessinsider.com)

Nothing for Something

Image by mrtruffle via FlickrThe highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. – St. Thomas Aquinas




When someone gets something for nothing. Someone else gets nothing for something. – anonymous



Someone has suggested that America’s greatest gifts to civilization are three: cornflakes, Kleenex, and credit. – Louis T. Benezet



When a merchant speaks of sheep he means the hide. – Swiss Proverb



No nation was ever ruined by trade. – Benjamin Franklin



Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. – Abraham Lincoln



Piracy, n: commerce without its folly-swaddles – just as God made it. – Ambrose Bierce

Related articles by Zemanta

• Physics and the Uncaused First Cause (geneveith.com)
• Benjamin Franklin's 13 Rules For Business Success (businessinsider.com)

Glory's Small Change

Image by mamamusings via Flickr

Popularity? It is glory’s small change. – Victor Hugo

Hypengyophobia – n. – Fear of responsibility – Hosefa Heifetz Byrne, Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary

Corporation, n. an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. – Ambrose Bierce

None know the weight of another’s burden. – thomas Fuller

The market doesn’t reward qualities that are not scarce. – Mark A. Johnson

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. -–John F. Kennedy

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory. – Pierre Corneile

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ten Parallels Between South Park's Eric Cartman and Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (pastemagazine.com)
• New Video of a Joyous JFK the Night Before He Died (beliefnet.com)

To be Taken in by Hope

Image by ViaMoi via Flickr

Nothing is good or bad but by comparison. – Thomas Fuller

If there’s an opinion, facts will be found to support it. – July Sproles

When people are least sure they are often most dogmatic. – John Kenneth Galbraith

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did, I said I didn’t know. – Mark Twain

Future, Noun – that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured. – Ambrose Bierce – The Devil’s Dictionary

During the last recession, many companies faced the future with “cautious optimism.” Hardly any chose to face it with “reckless pessimism.”

More are taken in by hope than by cunning. – Luc de Clapiers

How Do You Persuade a Man Who Does Not Disagree?

Image by Gauis Caecilius via Flickr

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. – Jorge Luis Borges

That’s not writing, that’s typing. – Truman Capote (referring to the writing style of Jack Kerouac)

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good. – Samuel Johnson

The covers of this book are too far apart. – Ambrose Bierce

Wise men say nothing in dangerous times. – John Selden

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. – Elbert Hubbard

You have not coverted a man because you have silenced him. – John Morley

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree but smiles. – Muriel Spark

Related articles by Zemanta

• A celebrated case of 'word rage' (boston.com)

The Most Fascinating Kind of Art

Image via Wikipedia

Business is like riding a bicycle. Either you keep moving or you fall down. – American Business Saying

You never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick. – Sydney Smith

Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. – Ambrose Bierce

Being good in business is the most facinating kind of art. – Andy Warhol

Those who know not, and know that they know not, these are foolish.
Those who know not, and know not that they know not, these are the simple and should be instructed.
Those who know, and know not that they know, these are asleep; wake them.
Those who know and know they know, these are the wise; listen to them. – Arab proverb

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. – Martin H. Fischer

I think the world is run by C students. – Al McGuire

I never let my schooling interfere with my education. – Mark Twain

What do Women Want? – Sigmund Freud

Image via Wikipedia

The Allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors; they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. – H.L. Mancken

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. – Charlotte Whitton

He gets on best with women who know how to get on without them. – Ambrose Bierce

I hate women because they always know where things are. – James Thurber

What do women want? – Sigmund Freud

I do not like work even when someone else does it. – Mark Twain

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment. – Robert Benchley

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. – Robert Frost

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. – Charles Baudelaire

Related articles by Zemanta

• Quotes Uncovered: Brides and Fruit Flies (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)
• READ: Sigmund Freud's 75-Year-Old Rejection of Conversion Therapy (queerty.com)

Like a Fish without a Bicycle

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Mohandas K. Gandhi on Western Civilization:
It would be a good idea.

I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest. – Alexandre Dumas

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. – Israel Zangwill

Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife. She has thought much worse things about you. – Jean Rostand

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands. – Ambrose Bierce

The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run. – John Barrymore

On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women. – H.L. Mencken

Women who insist upon having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong silent type. – fran Lebowitz

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and she can’t say, “No,” in any of them. – Dorothy Parker

What passes for woman’s intuition is often nothing more than a man’s transparency. George Jean Nathan

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. – Gloria Steinem

A Minor Form of Despair, Disguised as a Virtue

Image by David Paul Ohmer via Flickr

Optimism is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong. – Voltaire

Optimism: the noble temptation to see too much in everything. – G.K. Chesterton

The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum. – Havelock Ellis

The optimist thinks that this in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it. – J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oyster, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing the entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor. – Ambrose Bierce

There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst. – George Bernard Shaw

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. – Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson

Related articles by Zemanta

• Quotes Uncovered: Pork and Patriotism (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)

Woe to Him Inside a Nonconformist Clique

Image via Wikipedia

Nature is a hanging judge. – Anonymous

New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian. – Russel Baker

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. – George Bernard Shaw

Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity. – Eric Hoffer

I’m not OK, you’re not OK, and that’s OK. – William Sloane Coffin

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters. – George Bernard Shaw

Opera, n. A play representing life in another world whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes. – Ambrose Bierce

When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance. – Victor Borge

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nobel Prize system needs to be overhauled (telegraph.co.uk)

Every Law is an Infraction of Lliberty

Image via Wikipedia

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. – Robert Frost

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way the she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before. – F. Scott Fitzgerald (How romantic he was)

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietsche

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. – Anatole France

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. – H.L. Mencken

Every law is an infraction of liberty. – Jeremy Bentham

Lawsuit, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. – Ambrose Bierce

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. – George Bernard Shaw

Related articles by Zemanta

• Baltimore: City of Dirges and Elegies (americanfiction.wordpress.com)