Ambrose Bierce Quotes on Vice & Virtue (17 Quotes)

AGE, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit.

RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.

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.

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

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

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

POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

MULTITUDE, n. A crowd the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

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.

MEDAL, n. A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or services more or less authentic.

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.