Ambrose Bierce Quotes (876 Quotes)

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

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

LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Don't steal thoult never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

LAUREL, n. The laurus, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at court. (Vide supra.)

IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

MAGNITUDE, n. Size that is purely relative. If everything in the universe were increased 1,000 diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been.

LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.

J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel ... from a Latin verb, 'jacere', 'to throw,' because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

SELF-denial, n. Indulgence of a propensity to forego.

MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.

FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation.... Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.

MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable ... Commonly Saxon that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.

MEANDER, n. To proceed sinuously and aimlessly. The word is the ancient name of a river about one hundred and fifty miles south of Troy, which turned and twisted in the effort to get out of hearing when the Greeks and Trojans boasted of their prowess.

A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.

COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.

MOLECULE, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ...

DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.

BEHAVIOR, n. Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by breeding.

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.

PLEASE, v. To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, 'Every man his own horse.'

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.

ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection.

INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.

ASS, n. A public singer with a good voice but no ear.

HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.

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

PROOF, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one.