Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

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

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

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

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

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

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

When you doubt, abstain.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

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

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

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.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

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

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.