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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
Time
Infancy
World
Begins
Soon
Childhood
Lies
Pretty
Heaven
Lying
Afterward
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
Ambrose Bierce
Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.
Ambrose Bierce
ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! . . .
Ambrose Bierce
When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.
Ambrose Bierce
Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
Ambrose Bierce
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Ambrose Bierce
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
Ambrose Bierce
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
Ambrose Bierce
INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned unless he had a mind to - in opposition to the Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the beginning.
Ambrose Bierce
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Ambrose Bierce
Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
Ambrose Bierce
PICKANINNY, n. The young of the Procyanthropos, or Americanus dominans. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
Ambrose Bierce
According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Example is better than following it.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce
ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
Ambrose Bierce
LIAR, n. One who tells an unpleasant truth.
Ambrose Bierce
