Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

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.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

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.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

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.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

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

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

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

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.