Ambrose Bierce quotes

“The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“A man is known by the company he organizes.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“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.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Compromise, n. 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

“Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

“Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce