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» Quotes by Ambrose Bierce »
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the rank...
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, ...
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemn...
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a ...
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himse...
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one'...
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taug...
Sports
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but no...
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ours...
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a phi...
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket ...
An egotist is a person of low taste-more interested in himself than in...
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already suffic...
Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse ...
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of we...
Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that w...
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a h...
Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is ...
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poiso...
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion tha...
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Marriage
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise a...
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortun...
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of...
Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seei...
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - I think that I think, therefore I thin...
Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herse...
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as dis...
Politics
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individu...
Business
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, no...
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Time
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedr...
Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which ...
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failur...
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Doubt is the father of invention.
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if...
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toa...
Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the fo...
Education
Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our error...
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks witho...
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead anima...
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends ...
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not parti...
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the miser...
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, wh...
History
Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legis...
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more p...
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that al...
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for,...
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Dive...
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, inte...
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, lever...
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man,...
Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theor...
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sau...
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Education
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a ...
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the...
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Marriage
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Intelligence
Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a mas...
Marriage
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a sta...
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believ...
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for ...
Nature
Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is...
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, an...
Art
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an ingloriou...
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Art
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principle...
Politics
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf o...
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a si...
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situat...
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nat...
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernm...
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ev...
Anger
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving ...
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Success
Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right ...
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the ad...
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the bu...
Business
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the n...
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, a...
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of...
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. The...
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled...
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a goo...
When you doubt, abstain.
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is...