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

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
Half
Truth
Never
Doubted
Believed
Shadow
Doubt
Literature

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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You can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
Ambrose Bierce
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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
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A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.
Ambrose Bierce
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God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
Ambrose Bierce
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USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
Ambrose Bierce
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POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.
Ambrose Bierce
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Strive not for singularity in dress Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.
Ambrose Bierce
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FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.
Ambrose Bierce
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Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Ambrose Bierce
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TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (Glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (Mendax interminabilis).
Ambrose Bierce
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The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.
Ambrose Bierce
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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
Ambrose Bierce
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GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
Ambrose Bierce
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When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.
Ambrose Bierce
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The wife, or bitter half.
Ambrose Bierce
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Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
Ambrose Bierce
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
Ambrose Bierce
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MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.
Ambrose Bierce
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For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable . . . Commonly Saxon - that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.
Ambrose Bierce