Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

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

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.

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.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.