Ambrose Bierce Quotes on Place (16 Quotes)

PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.

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

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of customs.

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that 'Stone walls do not a prison make,' but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the moral instructor is no garden of sweets.

CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.

ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long.

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

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

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.

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

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.