Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women. As in Rome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier in Otumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, female heretics were thrown to the mice.

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.

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

My travels in New Jersey having made me proof against surprise

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.

ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

PERSEVERANCE, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

AFFIANCED, pp. Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

happiness may come if not sought, but if looked for will never be seen;

We know no more than the ancients; we only know other things, but nothing in which is an assurance of perpetuity, and little that is truly wisdom.

BALLOON, n. A contrivance for larding the earth with the fat of fools.

PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

En tiempo de paz prepara la guerra" tiene un significado más profundo de lo que parece; quiere decir, no sólo que todas las cosas terrestres tienen un fin, que el cambio es la única ley inmutable y eterna, sino que el terreno de la paz está sembrado con las semillas de la guerra y favorece su germinación y crecimiento.

BANG, n. The cry of a gun. That arrangement of a woman's hair which suggests the thought of shooting her; hence the name.

Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon which, in crushing, benumbs.

Heaven is a prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from analogy.

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,—exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.

EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.