Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
House, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.
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Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
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Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
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The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
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Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
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Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.
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Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
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Historian: A broad-gauge gossip.
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Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.
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Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
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Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
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Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
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Reconsider, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.
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Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two.
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Impiety, n.: Your irreverence toward my deity.
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Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.
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Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
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History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
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Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
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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.
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Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
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Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
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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.
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Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
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Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.
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Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
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Property, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
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Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
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We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
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Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
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Poker, n. A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this lexicographer unknown.
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Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
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Ambrose Bierce Quotes
The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
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Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
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Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coin out of your pocket.
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Academe, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n. A modern school where football is taught.
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Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
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Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.
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Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
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Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
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Aphorism, n.: Predigested wisdom.
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Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
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Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
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Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
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Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
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No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
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