Ambrose Bierce Quotes
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Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.
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The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.
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Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.
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Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
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Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.
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Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
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Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
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Generous, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
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Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
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Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.
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Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
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Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
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Freebooter, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
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True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked 'Unknown,' and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in 'honoring the memory' of him of whom no memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.
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Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
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When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
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Non-combatant, n. A dead Quaker.
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He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.
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While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.
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Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
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This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by a soldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier.
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Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.
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Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.