Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

By Ambrose Bierce

Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

By Ambrose Bierce

A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.

By Ambrose Bierce

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

By Ambrose Bierce

The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

By Ambrose Bierce

Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

By Ambrose Bierce

Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

By 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.

By Ambrose Bierce

Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

By Ambrose Bierce

Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.

By Ambrose Bierce

To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

By Ambrose Bierce

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

By Ambrose Bierce

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. Business

By Ambrose Bierce

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. Business

By Ambrose Bierce

Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.

By Ambrose Bierce

Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

By Ambrose Bierce

Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

By Ambrose Bierce

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. Art

By Ambrose Bierce

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. Art

By Ambrose Bierce

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. Anger

By Ambrose Bierce

Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

By Ambrose Bierce

Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.

By Ambrose Bierce

Woman absent is woman dead.

By Ambrose Bierce

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1440 times a day

By Ambrose Bierce

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

By Ambrose Bierce

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

By Ambrose Bierce

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

By Ambrose Bierce

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

By Ambrose Bierce

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

By Ambrose Bierce

Wedding: a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable

By Ambrose Bierce