Ambrose Bierce Quotes

NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.

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PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

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Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

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A modern school where football is taught.

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HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

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RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.

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RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.

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Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

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Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

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ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

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OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

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

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SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.

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RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.

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

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Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.

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An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

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Achievement; the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

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While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.

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