Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Most Famous Ambrose Bierce Quotes of All Time!

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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

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

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

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.

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.

Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

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.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

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.

Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.

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

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

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.

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.

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