Journalist · American · b. 1842 · 158 quotes
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce
Journalist · American · b. 1842
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
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.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
A man is known by the company he organizes.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
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.
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
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.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
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.
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
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.
Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
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.
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
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.
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
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.
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Doubt is the father of invention.
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
