Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.

Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

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

FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person - a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.

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

DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

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

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.

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

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.

DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

PIG, n. An animal ("Porcus omnivorus") closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.

PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

There would be far fewer accidents if we could only teach telephone poles to be more careful.

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it.

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

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.

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

When you doubt, abstain.

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

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

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

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.

UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.

DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.

NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.