Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!
DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
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!"
DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number - just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice.
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.
BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.
BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.
PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.
Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, "jacere", "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.
RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.
PICKANINNY, n. The young of the "Procyanthropos", or "Americanus dominans". It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbling and deadcatting of the opposition.
ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.
A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
