Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

The echo of a platitude.

Bore: a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Piracy n: commerce without its folly-swaddles - just as God made it.

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

Christian: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbour.

A statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distin-quished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is instead of as it should be.

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.

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

That sovereign of insufferables.

Destiny n: a tyrants authority for crime and a fools excuse for failure.

Platonic Love is a fools name for the affection between a disability and a frost.

History n: an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools.

Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.

Acquaintance n: a person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.

Ignoramus: a person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

Appeal in law: to put the dice into the box for another throw.

Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.