Ambrose Bierce

Woman absent is woman dead.

— Ambrose Bierce

Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— 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

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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

— Ambrose Bierce

Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

When in Rome, do as Rome does.

— 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.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

The covers of this book are too far apart.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

— 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.

— Ambrose Bierce

Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

— Ambrose Bierce

Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.

— Ambrose Bierce

An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!

— Ambrose Bierce

Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

— Ambrose Bierce

Edible. 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.

— Ambrose Bierce

APOLOGIZE, v. to lay the foundation for a future offense.

— Ambrose Bierce

A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

The gambling known as business looks with severe disfavor on the business known as gambling.

— Ambrose Bierce

Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

— Ambrose Bierce

Habit is a shackle for the free.

— Ambrose Bierce

Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.

— Ambrose Bierce

Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

— Ambrose Bierce

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

— Ambrose Bierce

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

— Ambrose Bierce

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

— Ambrose Bierce

Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

— Ambrose Bierce

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

— Ambrose Bierce

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

— Ambrose Bierce

Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

— Ambrose Bierce

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

— Ambrose Bierce

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

— Ambrose Bierce

A man is known by the company he organizes.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.

— Ambrose Bierce

Marriage. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

— Ambrose Bierce

Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

— Ambrose Bierce

An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.

— Ambrose Bierce

Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.

— Ambrose Bierce

Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

— Ambrose Bierce

A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.

— Ambrose Bierce

Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

— Ambrose Bierce

An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

— Ambrose Bierce

Patience. A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

— Ambrose Bierce

A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.

— Ambrose Bierce

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

— Ambrose Bierce

Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.

— 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.

— Ambrose Bierce

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

— Ambrose Bierce

Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

— Ambrose Bierce

Prophecy: The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

— Ambrose Bierce

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

— Ambrose Bierce

The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

— Ambrose Bierce

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce