Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be."

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

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

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

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

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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

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

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.

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

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

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

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

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

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

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

Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

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

Be as decent as you can. Don't believe without evidence. Treat things divine with marked respect — don't have anything to do with them. Do not trust humanity without collateral security; it will play you some scurvy trick. Remember that it hurts no one to be treated as an enemy entitled to respect until he shall prove himself a friend worthy of affection. Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths. And, finally, most important of all, endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

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

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

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

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

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

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

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

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

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

Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting

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

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

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

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

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

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

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

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

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

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

A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

Achievement is the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

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.

Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

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

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

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

PESSIMISM- philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

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.

Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intimate when he is rich and famous

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

Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

WINE, n.Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.