Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.

EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.

MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

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

FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs

Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound on yours.

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

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.

RADIUM, n. A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ that a scientist is a fool with.

MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

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

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.

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

ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

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

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

WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.

RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.

PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

hybrid, n. A pooled issue.

critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.

me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

applause, n. The echo of a platitude.

pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.

adherent, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.