Ambrose Bierce quotes - page 27

DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears. (Ambrose Bierce)
HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers particularly to those who love not wisely but other men's wives. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbling and deadcatting of the opposition. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails The shells are sometimes given to the poor. (Ambrose Bierce)
TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence an attribute of the critic. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity. (Ambrose Bierce)
BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury. View quote
Ambrose Bierce