Related:

• Optimism, n: The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good, bad, and everything right that is wrong.
  It is held with greatest tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile....
• PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• INNATE, adj. Natural, inherent -- as innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us.
  The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it "a black eye....
• BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters -- the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably
  a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind....
• A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• PREROGATIVE, n. A sovereign's right to do wrong. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel.
  -- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary...
• THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
  The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual developme...