Quote

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

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
Piano
Utensils
Machines
Visitor
Keys
Operated
Audience
Parlor
Funny
Visitors
Spirit
Depressing
Music
Spirits
Utensil
Machine
Subduing

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
General, said the commander of the delinquent brigade, I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than reductus in pulvis.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally damned. The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
Ambrose Bierce