Spots 
An acquaintance is someone known well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. Admiration is merely the polite recognition of another person's resemblance to oneself. An apology lays the foundation for a future offence rather than repairing a past one. Even adversity serves mainly to reduce the inconvenient number of one's friends.
A bore is a person who insists on talking when others wish him to listen. The brain functions as an apparatus with which human beings think that they think. A bride enters marriage with a fine prospect of happiness entirely behind her. A brute remains a beast of the field specifically because it fails to believe in human superiority.
A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. A conservative remains enamored of existing evils, whereas a liberal seeks to replace them with new ones. The cabbage grows in the kitchen garden as an agricultural vegetable about as large and wise as a human head.
Diplomacy operates as the patriotic art of lying for one's country. A dentist acts as a prestidigitator who puts metal into a patient's mouth to pull coins out of his pocket. Distress arises as a disease incurred primarily by exposure to the prosperity of a friend. A day remains a period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
An egotist is a person of low taste, far more interested in himself than in anyone else. An elector enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the candidate of another man's choice. Embezzlement represents financial ingenuity mistaken by the law for a crime.
Faith is belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel. Friendship functions as a vessel large enough to carry two people in fair weather, but only one in foul. The future is that period of time in which affairs prosper, friends remain true, and happiness is assured.
The gallows serves as a stage for the execution of tragic actors who have failed to please their audience. Gout is the physician's name for the rheumatism of a wealthy patient. A glutton is a person who escapes the evils of moderation by dying of overeating.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. Happiness consists of an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. A hypocrite professes virtues he does not respect to secure the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
Idleness represents a valuable public service performed by a person who refrains from doing harm. An idiot belongs to a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been controlling. Immortality exists as a toy of very large dimensions offered directly to human vanity.
Justice is a commodity which the State sells to the citizen in an adulterated condition as a reward for allegiance. Jealousy remains unduly concerned about preserving that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Knowledge is what one knows, as distinguished from what one merely believes, which is faith. A king is a male person holding royal rank, distinguished by a crown and a lack of useful occupation. A kleptomaniac is a rich thief whose affliction protects him from the prison sentence given to a poor one.
Love acts as a temporary insanity curable by marriage. A lawyer is one skilled in the circumvention of the law. Litigation operates as a machine into which a person enters as a pig and emerges as a sausage.
Marriage constitutes a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Man is an animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. Moral means conforming strictly to a local and mutable standard of right.
A neighbour is one whom scripture commands people to love as themselves, and who does his best to demand treatment as an enemy. A novel is a short story padded out to great length by a writer who lacks the brevity of wit.
Optimism is the doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, and everything good, especially the bad. The ocean is a body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man, an animal born without gills. Opportunity presents a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. Peace in international affairs is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. A philanthropist is a wealthy old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience picks his pocket. Praying asks that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner.
Quotation consists of repeating another person's words to save the trouble of thinking. A quack is an unaccredited physician who kills with less ceremony and fewer Latin terms than a certified doctor.
Religion is a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. A radical is a seeker of change who wishes to trade existing evils for unknown ones. Realism depicts things as they are to those who lack imagination.
Success is the one unpardonable sin toward one's fellows. A senator is a man who votes for measures he does not understand, written by clerks he does not know. Self-evident means evident to oneself and to nobody else.
Truth is an ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. The telephone is an invention that abrogates the advantage of keeping a disagreeable person at a distance. A tomb is a house where the dead live in peace until the living evict them.
Un-American describes anything wicked, intolerable, or opposed to the financial interests of the speaker. An unction is anointing performed to prepare a soul for a journey it would prefer not to make.
Virtue consists of certain actions performed out of fear of punishment or hope of reward. A vagrant is a person who has failed in his duty to possess property.
War is a byproduct of peace, where men kill people they do not know for the profit of men they do know. Wit is the salt with which the humorist spoils his beef. A woman is an animal residing humanly near man, differing chiefly in her capacity for devotion.
Xenophobia expresses fear of strangers, common to nations that possess nothing worth stealing. A xylophone is a musical instrument designed to produce wooden sounds for listeners with wooden ears.
Ambrose Bierce dissects human hypocrisy, politics, and social pretension through a series of razor-sharp, satirical definitions.