Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.

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

Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.

TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. The pig is taught by sermons and epistles / To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.

Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.

RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries . .

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

PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.

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

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.

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

Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.

Immigrant: An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.

Die: To stop sinning suddenly.

HEART, n. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments . . . . It is now known that sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid.

MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.

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.

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

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.

INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.

REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.

It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

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

UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.

TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

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

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

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.

A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul.

ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.

RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.