Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.

The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.

art, n. This word has no definition.

prospect, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually forbidden.

picture, n. A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three.

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.

HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.

NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.

REDRESS, n. Reparation without satisfaction.

mine, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

actually, adv. Perhaps; possibly.

repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.

CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.

adore, v.t. To venerate expectantly.

recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.

PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

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

Rhubarb: essence of stomach ache.

TABLE D'HOTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.

TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.

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

Example is better than following it.

Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.

IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors.

Finance is the art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager

A popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.

One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.

A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.

An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.

Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.

I was born to poor because of honest parents.

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.

San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen

Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.

Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.

When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.

TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

Twice – Once too often.

Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.

Christian - One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.