Quotations

«Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper.»

«Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.»

«Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of Love, and»

«If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.»

«PEDESTRIAN, n. The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an automobile.»

«SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.»

«COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view, So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins. On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all, Misfortune attend and disaster befall! May life be to them a succession of hurts; May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts; May aches and diseases encamp in their bones, Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones; May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest, And tapeworms securely their bowels digest; May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair, And frequent impalement their pleasure impair. Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse, By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors -- The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores! Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin! Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin, Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in. --K.Q.»

«WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.Should you ask me whence this laughter, Whence this audible big-smiling, With its labial extension, With its maxillar distortion And its diaphragmic rhythmus Like the billowing of an ocean, Like the shaking of a carpet, I should answer, I should tell you: From the great deeps of the spirit, From the unplummeted abysmus Of the soul this laughter welleth As the fountain, the gug-guggle, Like the river from the canon [sic], To entoken and give warning That my present mood is sunny. Should you ask me further question -- Why the great deeps of the spirit, Why the unplummeted abysmus Of the soule extrudes this laughter, This all audible big-smiling, I should answer, I should tell you With a white heart, tumpitumpy, With a true tongue, honest Injun: William Bryan, he has Caught It, Caught the Whangdepootenawah!Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank, Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep, Standing silent in the kneedeep With his wing-tips crossed behind him And his neck close-reefed before him, With his bill, his william, buried In the down upon his bosom, With his head retracted inly, While his shoulders overlook it? Does the sandhill crane, the shankank, Shiver grayly in the north wind, Wishing he had died when little, As the sparrow, the chipchip, does? No 'tis not the Shankank standing, Standing in the gray and dismal Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep. No, 'tis peerless William Bryan Realizing that he's Caught It, Caught the Whangdepootenawah!»

«PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction.»