Ambrose Bierce Quotations

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

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.

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

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

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

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.

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

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

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

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

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

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.

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

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

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

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

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

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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

Edible - 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.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

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

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

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

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

Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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

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

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

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.

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

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

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.

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.

Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

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

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

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

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

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

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.

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

Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

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

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

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

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

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

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.

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

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

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

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.

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

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

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.

Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

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

Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

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

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

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

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

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

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

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

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

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

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

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

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

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

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

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