Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

A wedding is a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697

Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.

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

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.

Responsibility, n. 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.

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

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

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that

HOMÅ'OPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.

MUMMY, n. - an ancient Egyptian handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.

Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

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

A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.