Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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

The wife, or bitter half.

Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.

An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.

WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.

Introduction - a social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.

ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.

REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

LIAR, n. One who tells an unpleasant truth.

LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral.

Strive not for singularity in dress; Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.

CUI BONO? [Latin] What good would that do "me"?

KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.

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.

IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow.

New York is too strenuous for me; it gets on my nerves.

RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.

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.

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.

Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is before.

Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.

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

A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.

The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.

Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.

MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.

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

To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.

Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.

According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.

K, n. A consonant; originally precisely that of our H, but altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of [one of two lofty columns in] the great temple of Jarute.

VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.

Damning, with bell, book and candle / Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal. / A rite permitting Satan to enslave him / Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.

PROOF, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one.

ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.

EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.

WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.

While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.

PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.