That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one — the knowledge and the dream.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

The downfall of all villains.

Knowable to those only who think it worth knowing.

n. A mealtime inversion that delights the palate and confuses the digestive system.

(also: Breakfast)

The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

---

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be —
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote —
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
—Halcyon Jones

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

a spotter's guide to clowns. Remember to exercise discretion when approaching.

Order: Clownidae
* Family Stanczykae (medieval jesters and harlequins)
* Family Commediae
** Genus Marceau (mimes and other street performers)
**Genus Emmitkellidae (classic clowns, birthday clowns, sad clowns, punch and judy puppets
*** Subgenus Vaudevillae (the Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers)
*** Subgenus Nightmaridae (scary clowns)
*** Subgenus Clussi (sexy clowns)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book.
In fact it is probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.

(It is not an Earth book, and has never been published on Earth.)
(also: Earth)
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one-more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?(also: God)

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great :Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.(also: DON'T PANIC )

It looks rather like a largish electronic calculator. It has about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looks insanely complicated, and this is one of the reasons why the snug plastic it fitted into has the words Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device is in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.

The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

An animated acceptance of the doctrines of Malthus.
(also: the devils dictionary)

A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
(also: period)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a large feline predator of africa (formerly of other places), whose men wear wigs while the women go crew-cut

(n.) the human tendency to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time on the basis that their truth is less important than their rhetorical usefulness

"Poetry, my dear friend, is the highest form of Logopoeia. It's where language goes to play where words become the wings of imagination and take you soaring to the stars. Poetry is a dance, a song and a symphony all in one, a celebration of the power of words to evoke emotions, create pictures and transport the mind.

(1809 -– 1882) –Scientist who proposed and popularised theory of evolution.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: charles darwin quotes)

A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.

An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
(also: truthful)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a reptilian animal that was at the back of the queue when evolution was handing out limbs

(n.) something one gives up in order to appease a temperamental deity or wife

(v.) to make something into a sacrifice by sacrificing it. ya dig?

(n.) professional term for the more scrapey kind of boo-boo

The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans. They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have been particularly happy afterward.
(also: the devils dictionary)