Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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Ambrose Bierce

Profession : Journalist

Birth : June 24, 1842

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Ambrose Bierce

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Ambrose Bierce

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Ambrose Bierce

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

Ambrose Bierce

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Ambrose Bierce

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Ambrose Bierce

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.

Ambrose Bierce

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Ambrose Bierce

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Ambrose Bierce

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Ambrose Bierce

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Ambrose Bierce

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

Ambrose Bierce

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Ambrose Bierce

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Ambrose Bierce

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

Ambrose Bierce

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Ambrose Bierce

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Ambrose Bierce