Quote

Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.

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
Denied
Conversation
Among
Nature
Ideas
Substitute
Substitutes

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
REDEMPTION, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin, through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned . . . . whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray big belly ache, heap God.'
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Pun: A form of wit, to which wise men stoop and fools aspire
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A miracle is an act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
Ambrose Bierce