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Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

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
World
Begins
Soon
Childhood
Lies
Pretty
Heaven
Lying
Afterward
Time
Infancy

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice.
Ambrose Bierce
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AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.
Ambrose Bierce
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PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Ambrose Bierce
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SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.
Ambrose Bierce
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RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
Ambrose Bierce
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CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another. When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he was observed to be deeply moved. What! said one of his disciples, you weep at the death of an enemy? Ah, 'tis true, replied the great Stoic but you should see me smile at the death of a friend..
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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Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
Ambrose Bierce
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EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.
Ambrose Bierce
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Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Ambrose Bierce
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MULTITUDE, n. A crowd the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.
Ambrose Bierce
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Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce
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An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
Ambrose Bierce
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GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
Ambrose Bierce
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Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. The Mad Philosopher, 1697
Ambrose Bierce
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IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
Ambrose Bierce
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Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Ambrose Bierce
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Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
Ambrose Bierce