Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Journalist & Writer, soldier
Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Insurance - 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.
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
When you doubt, abstain.
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
A man is known by the company he organizes.
Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.