The Devil's Dictionary: II

Moving right along, here's a second entry from Ambrose Bierce’s marvelously funny “The Devil’s Dictionary,” a favorite here at Kiko's House and a tome from which I will be quoting when the spirit moves me.

If you missed my initial post, I described Bierce (1842-1914) as a brilliant but underappreciated American author and journalist who had a long and tumultuous releationship with press baron William Randolph Hearst, and that he was a misanthrope possibly without peer.

BRAIN

Noun. An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of
office.