Ambrose Bierce Quotes
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The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen.'I did not know that I was a virtue,' she said. 'Why did you not choose Innocence?''Because of her ignorance,' they replied. 'She knows nothing but that she is a virtue.'
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Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.
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Saint, n. A dead sinner, revised and edited.
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Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
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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.
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A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
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Pig, n. An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
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Justice, n. A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.
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Youth, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
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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.
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To the eye of failure success is an accident.
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Birth, n. The first and direst of all disasters.
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Congratulation, n. The civility of envy.
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Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
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Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
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An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
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Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
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Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
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All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
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Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
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Twice, adv. Once too often.
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Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
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Liberty, n. One of imagination's most precious possessions.
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Barometer, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.