Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Ambrose Bierce quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
Alone, adj. In bad company.
— Ambrose Bierce
Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.
— Ambrose Bierce
Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.
— Ambrose Bierce
RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.
— Ambrose Bierce
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
— Ambrose Bierce
It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment.
— Ambrose Bierce
Art, n. This word has no definition.
— Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce
The best kind of onion soup is the simplest kind.
— Ambrose Bierce
Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket ...
— Ambrose Bierce
ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
— Ambrose Bierce
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
— Ambrose Bierce
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.
— Ambrose Bierce
An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
— Ambrose Bierce
RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
— Ambrose Bierce
If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
— Ambrose Bierce
Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
— Ambrose Bierce
Repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.
— Ambrose Bierce
DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.
— Ambrose Bierce
An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.
— Ambrose Bierce
MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.
— Ambrose Bierce
CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
— Ambrose Bierce
REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
— Ambrose Bierce
A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.
— Ambrose Bierce
Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
— Ambrose Bierce
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
— Ambrose Bierce
Immoral is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.
— Ambrose Bierce
To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
— Ambrose Bierce
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
— Ambrose Bierce
MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
— Ambrose Bierce
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
— Ambrose Bierce
Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
— Ambrose Bierce
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
— Ambrose Bierce
FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.
— Ambrose Bierce
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
— Ambrose Bierce
Achievement is the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
— Ambrose Bierce
Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
— Ambrose Bierce
No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
— H.P. Lovecraft
Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
— Ambrose Bierce
A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
— Ambrose Bierce
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
— Ambrose Bierce
Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
— Ambrose Bierce
The covers of this book are too far apart.
— Ambrose Bierce
CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
— Ambrose Bierce
LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers - particularly to those who love not wisely but other men's wives.
— Ambrose Bierce
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
— Ambrose Bierce
PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
— Ambrose Bierce
A revolution is a violent change of mismanagement.
— Ambrose Bierce
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
— Ambrose Bierce
Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
— Ambrose Bierce
Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.
— Ambrose Bierce
Humor, like Death, has all seasons for his own.
— Ambrose Bierce
Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.
— Ambrose Bierce
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
— Ambrose Bierce
PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
— Ambrose Bierce
TALK, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.
— Ambrose Bierce
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.
— Ambrose Bierce
PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
— Ambrose Bierce
Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.
— Ambrose Bierce
When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
— Ambrose Bierce
So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!
— Ambrose Bierce
BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.
— Ambrose Bierce
RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
— Ambrose Bierce
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
— Ambrose Bierce
DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed advantageous to embrace.
— Ambrose Bierce
Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
— Ambrose Bierce
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
— Ambrose Bierce
Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
— Ambrose Bierce
ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.
— Ambrose Bierce
Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the city of New York
— Ambrose Bierce
A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.
— Ambrose Bierce
MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
— Ambrose Bierce
A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
— Ambrose Bierce
The devil had not only acquired a monopoly of the good music and the good fun, but has of late acquired a controlling interest in the good writing.
— Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
— Ambrose Bierce
OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.
— Ambrose Bierce
Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
— Ambrose Bierce
Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
— Ambrose Bierce
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
— Ambrose Bierce
When you doubt, abstain.
— Ambrose Bierce
REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
— Ambrose Bierce
WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.
— Ambrose Bierce
CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.
— Ambrose Bierce
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
— Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
— Ambrose Bierce