Ambrose Bierce Quotes

696 Sourced Quotes

I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities.

Ambrose Bierce
PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

Ambrose Bierce
One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce
COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.

Ambrose Bierce
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.

Ambrose Bierce
Land, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.

Ambrose Bierce
CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses."

Ambrose Bierce
Vote, v. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

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Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Ambrose Bierce
PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

Ambrose Bierce
Wit. n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Ambrose Bierce
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Ambrose Bierce
OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

Ambrose Bierce
APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697

Ambrose Bierce
When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.

Ambrose Bierce
If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.

Ambrose Bierce
RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

Ambrose Bierce
LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

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ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.

Ambrose Bierce
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

Ambrose Bierce
GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.

Ambrose Bierce
UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.

Ambrose Bierce
WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

Ambrose Bierce
LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia.

Ambrose Bierce
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

Ambrose Bierce
EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

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

Ambrose Bierce
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.

Ambrose Bierce
USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

Ambrose Bierce