Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands, you are safe, for you can watch both his.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.

Mausoleum n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.

Epitaph n: an inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

aim, n. The task we set our wishes to.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Destiny n: a tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Aristocrats: n. fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts - guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.

Education n: that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.

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

Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.