Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Opportunity is a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Politeness is the most acceptable hypocrisy

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, profession virtues that he does not respect secures the advantage of seeming to be what he depises

Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intimate when he is rich and famous.

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

WINE and Fermented grape-juice known to the Womens Christian Union as liquor, sometimes as rum. Wine, madam, is Gods next best gift to man.

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.

Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

MORAL, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

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

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

Reconsider, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.

Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

Reason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits.

"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.

Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.