Ambrose Bierce Quotes

DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.

SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.

Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.

Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.

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.

PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.

I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.

Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp."

UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.

ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.

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

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.

Doubt is the father of invention.

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.

A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.

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

Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.

A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

PALM, n. A species of tree . . . of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed . . . . This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.

There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself; whereas he is a fool then only.

Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.

PHOTOGRAPH, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as that of a Cheyenne.

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

MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable; indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be unscientific-and without science we are as the snakes and toads.

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

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

FORCE, n. "Force is but might," the teacher said p/ "That definition's just."/ The boy said naught but throught instead,/ Remembering his pounded head:/ "Force is not might but must!"

HASH: There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.