Ambrose Quotes

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

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

There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.

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.

War: A by-product of the arts of peace.

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

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

A modern school where football is taught.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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."

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

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

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

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

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

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

Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.

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

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.

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

When you doubt, abstain.

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.

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

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang.

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

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.

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

CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

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.

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

APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider

A chop is a piece of leather skillfully attached to a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants.

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

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

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

BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.

Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.

DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.

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