Ambrose Bierce Quotes & Sayings

OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe ... The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly. — Ambrose Bierce

REDRESS, n. Reparation without satisfaction. — Ambrose Bierce

Pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection. — Ambrose Bierce

PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it. — Ambrose Bierce

Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another. — Ambrose Bierce

Diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country. — Ambrose Bierce

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. — Ambrose Bierce

A miracle is an act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king. — Ambrose Bierce

NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon. — Ambrose Bierce

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones. — Ambrose Bierce

Evolutionary biology is genuinely scientific, but more than that it opens the door to a world more marvellous than any Christian fundamentalist has ever read into the pages of the Bible. — Ambrose Bierce

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state. — Ambrose Bierce

FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life. — Ambrose Bierce

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. — Ambrose Bierce

LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg "pate". — Ambrose Bierce

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered. — Ambrose Bierce

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

FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed. — Ambrose Bierce

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil. — Ambrose Bierce

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection. — Ambrose Bierce

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

FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex. — Ambrose Bierce

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom. — Ambrose Bierce

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

Deep sadness is an artist of powers that affects people in different ways. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, shocking all the emotions to a sharper life. To another, it comes as the blow of a crushing strike. — Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. — Ambrose Bierce

They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid. — Ambrose Bierce

WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven. — Ambrose Bierce

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. — Ambrose Bierce

GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers. — Ambrose Bierce

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass. — Ambrose Bierce

RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation. — Ambrose Bierce

They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. — Ambrose Bierce

TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source
the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens. — Ambrose Bierce

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. — Ambrose Bierce

Apologize: To lay the foundation for a future offence. — Ambrose Bierce

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. — Ambrose Bierce

HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not. — Ambrose Bierce

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. — Ambrose Bierce

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. — Ambrose Bierce

ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden. — Ambrose Bierce

OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an "old man". Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an "old" book. — Ambrose Bierce

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own. — Ambrose Bierce

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

DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed. — Ambrose Bierce

URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others. — Ambrose Bierce

The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. — Ambrose Bierce

LIAR, n. One who tells an unpleasant truth. — Ambrose Bierce

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

SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven. — Ambrose Bierce

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

Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness. — Ambrose Bierce

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party. — Ambrose Bierce

He laughs best who laughs least. — Ambrose Bierce

The wife, or bitter half. — Ambrose Bierce

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him. — Ambrose Bierce

The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool. — Ambrose Bierce

Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.". — Ambrose Bierce

Gratitude, n. A sentiment lying midway between a benefit received and a benefit expected. — Ambrose Bierce

TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect ("Glossina morsitans") whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist ("Mendax interminabilis"). — Ambrose Bierce

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

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

What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it. — Ambrose Bierce

Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises. — Ambrose Bierce

Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support. — Ambrose Bierce

It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment. — Ambrose Bierce

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. — Ambrose Bierce

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

REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted. — Ambrose Bierce

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

It has been observed
that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of
others from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that
the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. — Ambrose Bierce

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

READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang. — Ambrose Bierce

MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants. — Ambrose Bierce

OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy. — Ambrose Bierce

Me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three. — Ambrose Bierce

Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. — Ambrose Bierce

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. — Ambrose Bierce

FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit. — Ambrose Bierce

Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your arrival is already recorded. — Ambrose Bierce

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. — Ambrose Bierce

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

PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn. — Ambrose Bierce

JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion. — Ambrose Bierce

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

Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity. — Ambrose Bierce

Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. — Ambrose Bierce

A revolution is a violent change of mismanagement. — Ambrose Bierce

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue. — Ambrose Bierce

ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long. — Ambrose Bierce

Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit. — Ambrose Bierce

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment. — Ambrose Bierce

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
strangers. — Ambrose Bierce

Recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known. — Ambrose Bierce

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity. — Ambrose Bierce

DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed advantageous to embrace. — Ambrose Bierce

RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem. — Ambrose Bierce

Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box. — Ambrose Bierce

A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread. — Ambrose Bierce

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled. — Ambrose Bierce