Ambrose Bierce quotes - page 9

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly. (Ambrose Bierce)
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. (Ambrose Bierce)
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure. View quote
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. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. (Ambrose Bierce)
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. View quote
Ambrose Bierce