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.
– Ambrose Bierce
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
– Ambrose Bierce
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
– Ambrose Bierce
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
– Ambrose Bierce
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
– Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
– Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
– Ambrose Bierce
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
– Ambrose Bierce
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
– Ambrose Bierce
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
– Ambrose Bierce
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
– Ambrose Bierce
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
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
– Ambrose Bierce
Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
– Ambrose Bierce
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
– Ambrose Bierce
Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
– Ambrose Bierce
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
– Ambrose Bierce
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
– Ambrose Bierce
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
– Ambrose Bierce
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
– Ambrose Bierce
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
– Ambrose Bierce
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.
– 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
Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
– Ambrose Bierce
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
– Ambrose Bierce
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
– Ambrose Bierce
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
– Ambrose Bierce
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
– Ambrose Bierce
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
– Ambrose Bierce
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
– Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
– Ambrose Bierce
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
– Ambrose Bierce
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
– Ambrose Bierce
Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
– Ambrose Bierce
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
– Ambrose Bierce
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
– Ambrose Bierce
Doubt is the father of invention.
– Ambrose Bierce
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.
– Ambrose Bierce
Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
– Ambrose Bierce
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
– Ambrose Bierce
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
– Ambrose Bierce
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
– Ambrose Bierce
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
– Ambrose Bierce
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
– Ambrose Bierce
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
– Ambrose Bierce
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
– Ambrose Bierce
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
– Ambrose Bierce
Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.
– 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
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
– Ambrose Bierce
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.
– Ambrose Bierce
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
– Ambrose Bierce
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.
– 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
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.
– Ambrose Bierce
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
– Ambrose Bierce
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
– Ambrose Bierce
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
– Ambrose Bierce
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
– Ambrose Bierce
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
– Ambrose Bierce
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
– Ambrose Bierce
Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion.
– Ambrose Bierce
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
– Ambrose Bierce
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
– Ambrose Bierce
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
– Ambrose Bierce
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
– Ambrose Bierce
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
– Ambrose Bierce
Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong... It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
– Ambrose Bierce
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
– Ambrose Bierce
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
– Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
– Ambrose Bierce
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
– Ambrose Bierce
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
– Ambrose Bierce
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
– Ambrose Bierce
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
– Ambrose Bierce
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
– Ambrose Bierce
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
– Ambrose Bierce
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
– Ambrose Bierce
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
– Ambrose Bierce
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
– Ambrose Bierce
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
– Ambrose Bierce
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
– Ambrose Bierce
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
– Ambrose Bierce
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
– Ambrose Bierce
Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
– Ambrose Bierce
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
– Ambrose Bierce
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
– 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
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
– Ambrose Bierce
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
– Ambrose Bierce
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
– Ambrose Bierce
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
– Ambrose Bierce
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
– Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
– Ambrose Bierce
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
– Ambrose Bierce
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
– Ambrose Bierce
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.