X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

Ambrose Bierce Inspirational Quotes (940)

Page 2 of 40
Filter & Style
Image
PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation. . . . Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A lottery is a tax on stupidity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself whereas he is a fool then only.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LINEN, n. A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Children who have proven themselves to be incorrigible by the age of twelve should be quickly and quietly beheaded, lest they grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate the likeness of their being.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Least said is soon disavowed.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
Ambrose Bierce
Previous
Next