Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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

Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.

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

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.

Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.

FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

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

LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.

Truth - An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.

Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.

RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.

TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.

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

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.

Think twice before you speak to a friend in need

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

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

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

Doubt is the father of invention.

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

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

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

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.

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

PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He presided at the piccolo."

NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

A modern school where football is taught.

MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.

MAMMALIA, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

Congratulations is the civility of envy.

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.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

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.

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

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

resolute, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.

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

Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

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