Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Doubt is the father of invention.

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

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

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

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

When you doubt, abstain.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.