Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

Quotes

• War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

• Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

• Acquaintance, n.: 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.

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

• Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

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

• Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

• Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)

• Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

• To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

• Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

• Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

• ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

• ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

• ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne. Poor Isabella's Dead, whose abdication
  Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
  For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her:
  She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
  To History she'll be no royal riddle --
  Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle. G.J.

• ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.

• ABILITY, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

• ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

• ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.