Ambrose Bierce quotes - page 16

REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion. (Ambrose Bierce)
REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a 'crowned head,' although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today ... is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
K, n. A consonant originally precisely that of our H, but altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of one of two lofty columns in the great temple of Jarute. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown. (Ambrose Bierce)
REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
BOUNTY, n. The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument as, 'He presided at the piccolo.' View quote
Ambrose Bierce
GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Violin, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat. (Ambrose Bierce)
WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them. View quote
Ambrose Bierce