Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.

Ambrose Bierce
PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

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POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.

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PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

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INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

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OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser "triumph."

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ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.

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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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PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.

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Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral.

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One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.

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RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.

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No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.

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CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

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A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.

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The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.

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Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. The pig is taught by sermons and epistles / To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

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OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

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Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future; Age knows her as the Dream.

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PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

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FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

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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.

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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

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HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

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Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.

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PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

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RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.

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WEATHER, n. The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

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The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.

Ambrose Bierce