Ambrose Bierce

Journalist

1842-06-24

Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

• His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him.

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

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• Marriage, n.: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

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• Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

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• History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

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• God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

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• BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

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• You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.

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• GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

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• AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

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• diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

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• POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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• MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

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• ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

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• acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

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• Fear has no brains it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.

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• Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably out to be. His chief occupation is the extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

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• Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

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• OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer's attitude toward obsolete words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader.

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• Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'.

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