Ambrose Bierce quotes

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

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

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

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.

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.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

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

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

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

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

When you doubt, abstain.

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.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

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

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

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

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doubt is the father of invention.

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

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

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

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

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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

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

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

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

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

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.

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

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

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

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

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

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

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

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

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

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

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

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

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

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

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