Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

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.

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Compromise, n. 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.

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

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

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

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

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.

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

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

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.