Ambrose Bierce quotes
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914): American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. The library holds 635 quotes by Ambrose Bierce, drawn from The Devil’s Dictionary. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: humour, faith, power, art, time, money
The best-known Ambrose Bierce quotes
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End: the position farthest removed on either hand from the Interlocutor.
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Reasonable: accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
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Critic: a person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
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Martyr: one who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
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Language: the music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.
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Aristocracy: government by the best men. (In this sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts—guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
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Freebooter: a conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
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Benedictines: an order of monks otherwise known as black friars.
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Caaba: a large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.
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Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
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Degradation: one of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
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Pleonasm: an army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
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Price: value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
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Cannibal: a gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
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Fiddle: an instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.
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Polygamy: a house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has but one.
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Misericorde: a dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
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Friendless: having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
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Opposition: in politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
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Experience: the wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
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Eavesdrop: secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.
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Ransom: the purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller, nor can belong to the buyer. The most unprofitable of investments.
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Beg: to ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.
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Rhadomancer: one who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for precious metals in the pocket of a fool.
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Loquacity: a disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
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Nepotism: appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.
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Idleness: a model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
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Merchant: one engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
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Cannon: an instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
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Back: that part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.
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Abasement: a decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.
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Abatis: rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.
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Piano: a parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
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Repartee: prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
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Out-of-doors: that part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.
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Gout: a physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
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Nectar: a drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.
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Datary: a high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope’s bulls with the words Datum Romae. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.
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Benefactor: one who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without, however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the means of all.
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Pedestrian: the variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an automobile.
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Widow: a pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ’s tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
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Illuminati: a sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights— cunctationes illuminati.
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Harmonists: a sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
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Recreation: a particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
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Clock: a machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
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Barometer: an ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
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Peace: in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
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Whangdepootenawah: in the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.
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Immodest: having a strong sense of one’s own merit, coupled with a feeble conception of worth in others.
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Entertainment: any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
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Convent: a place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.
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Recruit: a person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform and from a soldier by his gait.
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Extinction: the raw material out of which theology created the future state.
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Responsibility: a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
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Presentable: hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.
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Injustice: a burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.
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Ocean: a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
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Majesty: the state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.
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Intimacy: a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
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Male: a member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
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