Top 985 Quotes & Sayings by Ambrose Bierce - Page 14

MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke.

PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.

Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

Miss, n. A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. In the general abolition of social titles in this our country they miraculously escaped to plague us. If we must have them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.

I was born to poor because of honest parents.

Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.

True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked "Unknown," and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in "honoring the memory" of him of whom no memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.

Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.

Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.

Twice – Once too often.

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.

Christian - One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of remarkable Christian forbearance among men - were it not for a mawkish humanitarianism, coupled with imperfect digestive powers, we should devour our young, as Nature intended.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.

Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.

DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.

Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.

Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.

TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.

Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.

RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.

NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.

Idiot - A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.

Children who have proven themselves to be incorrigible by the age of twelve should be quickly and quietly beheaded, lest they grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate the likeness of their being.

Worms'-Meat, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.

The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

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.

Liberty is one of the imagination's most precious possessions.

One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.

San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen

When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.

Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.

Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.

The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.

Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other links.

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.

Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.

If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.