Ambrose Quotes

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.

Condole - to show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.

Glutton- A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.

Learning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.

The best kind of onion soup is the simplest kind.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

REPENTANCE, n. The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin.

Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there.

GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.

WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.

PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.

YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.

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

TRUCE, n. Friendship.

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.

HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.

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

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.

WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of wrath," etc. . . .

HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.