Saturday, March 12, 2005

Words mean what you want them to mean

I am a lover of quotations and quips. I file them them away like crazy... there are great respositories on the web or even a classic hardback collection such as John Barlett's Familiar Quotations.
But I found the following from an article that I clipped out twenty years ago from a "filler" service that a business can use in a mailer to stay in touch with customers. Anyway, for your enjoyment...

Words mean what you want them to mean. But sometimes it's helpful if we agree on our definitions. Here is a list of the real meanings behind some of the words you thought you knew, by people you thought knew better...

Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce

Baby: A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. -- Father Ronald Knox

Celebrity: A person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. -- Fred Allen

Conscience: The inner voice which warns us that someone might be looking. -- H.L. Mencken

Egotist: A person more interested in himself than in me. -- Ambrose Bierce

Friends: People who borrow books and set wet glasses on them. -- Edwin Arlington Robinson

Genius: One who can do anything except make a living. -- Joey Adams

Originality: Remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it. -- Laurence Peter

Professor: One who talks in someone else's sleep. -- W.H. Auden

Television: A medium. So called because it is neither rare or well done. -- Ernie Kovacs

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