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Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

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
Another
Erroneously
Quotation
Repeating
Quotations
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More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.
Ambrose Bierce
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A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa
Ambrose Bierce
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CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce
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JESTER, n. An officer attached to the king's household to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances . . . the king's own conduct and decrees [being] sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind.
Ambrose Bierce
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PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.
Ambrose Bierce
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HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
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A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
Ambrose Bierce
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GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
Ambrose Bierce
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He laughs best who laughs least.
Ambrose Bierce
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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar tumble-bug. It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Ambrose Bierce
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RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.
Ambrose Bierce
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PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
Ambrose Bierce
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Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
Ambrose Bierce
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PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.
Ambrose Bierce
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Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
Ambrose Bierce
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DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed advantageous to embrace.
Ambrose Bierce