Ambrose Bierce quotes - page 13

DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command. (Ambrose Bierce)
LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss yet when lost it is not missed. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OVERWORK, n. A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation.... Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting. (Ambrose Bierce)
Dawn, n. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, author of 'Cogito ergo sum' to demonstrate the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved 'Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum' 'I think that I think, therefore I think that I am' as close an approach. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MAUSOLEUM, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
KNOWLEDGE, n. -- The small body of ignorance that we arrange and classify. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PLAGIARISM, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
RESPONSIBILITY, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. (Ambrose Bierce)
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
REFLECTION, n. An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the perils that we shall not again encounter. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership. View quote
Ambrose Bierce