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