Ambrose Quotes

Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had resisted, overcome his power, broken his will.

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 . . .

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

Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.

predicament, n. The wage of consistency.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.

ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

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

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

Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.

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.

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

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

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)

plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. No one is excepted, not [even] the infant.

My first book was the book that changed my life.

FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.

A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.

We must not build on the sands of an uncertain and everchanging science...but upon the rock of inspired Scriptures.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

He who reads much and understands much, receives his fill. He who is full, refreshes others.

Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.

The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

The flesh is a worse enemy than the devil himself.

Where there is simplicity, there are a hundred Angels, but where there is cleverness - there are none.

If you find that you have no love but desire to have it, do the works of love and the Lord will see your desire and effort and put love in your heart.

Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

It was not by dialectic that it pleased God to save His people.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Alligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.