Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

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.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

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.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

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.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

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.

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

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

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

When you doubt, abstain.

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

Doubt is the father of invention.

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.

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

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

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

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