“Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.”
Source: Epigrams, p. 369
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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914Related quotes

As quoted in his obituary, in the New York Times, 24 September, 1939
Attributed from posthumous publications

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)
Context: Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, is nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain.

Founding Address (1876)
Context: The very names that ought to be held up as luminaries of honor have become bywords of villainy, and the foul stench of corruption fills our public offices. See how the Nation, in this the festal epoch of her marriage to Liberty, stands blackened with the crimes of her first dignitaries, and hides her head in shame before the nations!

“The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.”
"A Defence of Slang"
The Defendant (1901)

“Hate gave birth to the slang; Slang (‘argot’) exists not anymore.”
( « L'argot est né de la haine, il n'existe plus» Arts, 6. February 1957. in À l’agité du bocal et autres textes, (op. cit.) p. 55.