Ambrose Bierce Quotes on Man (41 Quotes)

INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.

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.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

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

WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.

GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

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

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

TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commo.

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

Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

PIETY, n. Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

DARING, n. One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.

HOUSE, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beelte, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.

MALE, n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties good providers and bad providers.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.

CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

MISS, n. The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Let us be consistent and also give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance if awkwardly performed ... deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life.

REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.

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

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

ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter sic resemblance of the Average Man.

ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.

COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom and of whom only it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

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