Ambrose Bierce Quotes (876 Quotes)

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

MEERSCHAUM, n. A fine white clay, which for convenience in coloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmen engaged in that industry.

PLAUDITS, n. Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and devour it.

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

RECOLLECT, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.

PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.

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.

Boundary n. in political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

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

REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it. Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it) At work upon a book, and so read out of it The qualities that you have first read into it.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.

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.

SCEPTER, n. A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.

INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.

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

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

WORMS'-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material.

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

PROOF-READER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know.

MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.

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

INDIGESTION, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind.

OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground.

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

GOUT, n. A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.

LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

HYBRID, n. A pooled issue.

CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.

RESPONSIBILITY, n. 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.

PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.

DEFENCELESS, adj. Unable to attack.

Habit is a shackle for the free.

ARCHBISHOP, n. An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the 'buffone', or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.