Bierce's Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Bierce's
Bierce's Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Bierce's quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
Alone, adj. In bad company.
— Ambrose Bierce
TABLE D'HOTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.
— Ambrose Bierce
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
— Ambrose Bierce
GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
— Chet Williamson
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
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
— Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
— Ambrose Bierce
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
— Ambrose Bierce
Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
— 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
Gout, a physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient
— Ambrose Bierce
It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment.
— Ambrose Bierce
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
— Ambrose Bierce
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
— Ambrose Bierce
ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
— Ambrose Bierce
ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
— Ambrose Bierce
RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.
— Ambrose Bierce
RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
— Ambrose Bierce
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
— Ambrose Bierce
FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.
— Ambrose Bierce
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
— Ambrose Bierce
FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
— Ambrose Bierce
Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
— Ambrose Bierce
Repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.
— Ambrose Bierce
ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.
— Ambrose Bierce
When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.
— 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
Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
— Ambrose Bierce
Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
— Ambrose Bierce
Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
— Ambrose Bierce
There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.
— Ambrose Bierce
In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.
— Ambrose Bierce
Here's to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands.
— Ambrose Bierce
DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
— Ambrose Bierce
PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
— Ambrose Bierce
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
— Ambrose Bierce
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
— Ambrose Bierce
SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
— Ambrose Bierce
Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
— Ambrose Bierce
Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.
— Ambrose Bierce
DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
— Ambrose Bierce
ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden.
— Ambrose Bierce
OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground.
— Ambrose Bierce
Diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
— Ambrose Bierce
Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.
— Ambrose Bierce
An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
— Ambrose Bierce
Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
— Ambrose Bierce
Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
— Ambrose Bierce
HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
— Ambrose Bierce
Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
— Ambrose Bierce
The god of the world's leading religion.
— 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
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
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
Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
— Ambrose Bierce
PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
— Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
— Ambrose Bierce
TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
— Ambrose Bierce
ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
— Ambrose Bierce
NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.
— Ambrose Bierce
FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
— Ambrose Bierce
LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.
— Ambrose Bierce
PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
— 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
Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
— Ambrose Bierce
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
— Ambrose Bierce
