Devil's Dictionary

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a substantial _quid_.

INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Ambrose Bierce