Quotes By Author

Sort by Topic

Quotations By Ambrose Bierce


Ability
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Age
Age that period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit.

Beauty
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Bore
Bore. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Business
Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Conservative-Liberal
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce

Destiny
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Dictator
DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

Education
Education, n. That which discloses tothe wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Enemy
When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.

Faith
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Immortality
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. -- Ambrose Bierce

Law
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. -- Ambrose Bierce

Marriage
Marriage: a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves - making in all two.

Quotations
Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.