Explore Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

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

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

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

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

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.