Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.