Ambrose Bierce

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
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

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce

Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce

The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
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

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Ambrose Bierce

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Ambrose Bierce

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.
Ambrose Bierce

Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can’t find you.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Ambrose Bierce

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce

Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
Ambrose Bierce

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Ambrose Bierce

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Ambrose Bierce

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Genius – to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
Ambrose Bierce

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
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

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
Ambrose Bierce

Sabbath – a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Ambrose Bierce

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Ambrose Bierce

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
Ambrose Bierce

Genealogy, n. An account of one’s descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce