Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket...

The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum.

His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull

Citation : Action de répéter de façon erronée les mots d'un autre.

ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

ADAM'S APPLE, n. A protuberance on the throat of a man, thoughtfully provided by Nature to keep the rope in place.

Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably out to be. His chief occupation is the extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet—two clarionets.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of an edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

Phonograph - An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Marriage , n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

Optimist , n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

BALLOT, n. A simple device by which a majority proves to a minority the folly of resistance. Many worthy persons of imperfect thinking apparatus believe that majorities govern through some inherent right; and minorities submit, not because they must, but because they ought.

n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know.

LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed

there may be thunder in Europe but it is in America the lightning will fall

Callous, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.

COMPROMISE, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.

ANTAGONIST, n. The miserable scoundrel who won't let us.

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.