INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out.

Famous Quotes / Ambrose Bierce

Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Ambrose Bierce: "INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out."

Quotations about

Acceptably	Afterward	Baths	Bind
Blacken	Called	Chiefly	Compound
Conceal	Contradictory	Crime	Edifice
Employed	Established	Facilitate	Fame
Generally	Gumarabic	Idiocy	Infection
Infrequently	Intellectual	Into	Iron
Journalists	Make	Material	Money
Mortar	Most	Occurs	Others
Paid	Pays	Peculiar	Person
Persons	Promote	Properties	Quality
Rascal	Reputations	Stones	Tannogallate
Them	Together	Twice	Unmake
Used	Villainous	Water	White
Whitewash

Quotes by Power Quotations

INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out. - Ambrose Bierce