Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

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

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

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

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

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

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

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

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.