Ambrose Bierce quotes

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— 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

“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

“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.”

— Ambrose Bierce