Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.

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.

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

ZEUS /n./ The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.

moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

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

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

UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.

Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.

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

You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.

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.

OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.

Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.

Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.

OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

MANICHEISM, n. The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.

Friendship: A ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long.

BRANDY, n. A cordial composed on one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.

The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.

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.

CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

predicament, n. The wage of consistency.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.

SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam.

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

FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.

X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.

Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.

A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors - to dislodge the worms.

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.

Scriptures - The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

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

OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer . . .