Ambrose Bierce - Wisdom Quotes

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Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch—as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.

Ambrose Bierce
Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.

Ambrose Bierce
Experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Ambrose Bierce
MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.

Ambrose Bierce
Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.

Ambrose Bierce
EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.

Ambrose Bierce
ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

Ambrose Bierce
OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment.... judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it.

Ambrose Bierce
Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!

Ambrose Bierce
REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

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
Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

Ambrose Bierce