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Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Faulty
Cynic
Cynicism
Sees
Whose
Ought
Vision
Things
Blackguard

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
Ambrose Bierce
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A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
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OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.
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To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.
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Learning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
Ambrose Bierce
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FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
Ambrose Bierce
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PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
Ambrose Bierce
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diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
Ambrose Bierce
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PICKANINNY, n. The young of the Procyanthropos, or Americanus dominans. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
Ambrose Bierce
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MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
Ambrose Bierce
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The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce
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NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Ambrose Bierce
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An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
Ambrose Bierce
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The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
Ambrose Bierce
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Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Ambrose Bierce
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In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference.
Ambrose Bierce
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K, n. A consonant originally precisely that of our H, but altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of [one of two lofty columns in] the great temple of Jarute.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
Ambrose Bierce
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PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
Ambrose Bierce