Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914) -
US author & satirist
Best known for his work Devil’s Directory, Ambrose Bierce s a journalist, an editorialist and a satirist. He earned a nick name for himself, Bitter Bierce because of his bitter views and vehemence as a critic. His judgment about any poem or prose was so valuable that it could define the destiny of that writer. He did act as a guiding force for some writers and poets. Some of his better known works are Cobwebs from an Empty Skull, The Dance of Death and Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
In his life he moved on to become a famous editor for a host of local newspapers and periodicals in San Francisco. Some of these short stories are The Haunted Valley, an Inhabitant of Carcosa and Beyond the Wall. |
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Some of them were The San Francisco News Letter, The Argonaut and The Wasp. The short stories that he wrote on the terrible things he had seen in the war were considered among the best of the 19th century.
Here are some of the best quotes from Ambrose Bierce :
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce
Bacchus : A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
Ambrose Bierce
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce
Barometer : An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Ambrose Bierce
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce
Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Beauty : the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Ambrose Bierce
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose Bierce
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
Ambrose Bierce
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce
Anoint : To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Debt : An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce
Bore : A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Ambrose Bierce
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce
Conservative : A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
Deliberation : The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
Ambrose Bierce
There are 4 kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Doubt is the father of invention.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Edible : 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.
Ambrose Bierce
Education : That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce
Famous : Conspicuously miserable.
Ambrose Bierce
AMNESTY : The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Ambrose Bierce
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Ambrose Bierce
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Ambrose Bierce
GENEALOGY : An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
Ambrose Bierce
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.
Ambrose Bierce
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
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.
Ambrose Bierce
When you doubt, abstain.
Ambrose Bierce
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Ardor : The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Ambrose Bierce
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Ambrose Bierce
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Ambrose Bierce
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Ambrose Bierce
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