Quote

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Ambrose Bierce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Commonly
Mainly
Degree
Degrees
High
Ability
Found
Solemnity
Consist

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
REPARATION, n. Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference
Ambrose Bierce
Image
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own you are permitted only to wish to be another.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Friendship: A ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.
Ambrose Bierce