Journalist · American · b. 1842 · 158 quotes
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce
Journalist · American · b. 1842
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
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.
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
