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NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

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
Padded
Short
Novel
Literature
Story
Stories

More quotes by 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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PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.
Ambrose Bierce
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LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Ambrose Bierce
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EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
Ambrose Bierce
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CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.
Ambrose Bierce
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To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
Ambrose Bierce
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A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.
Ambrose Bierce
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GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
Ambrose Bierce
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Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce
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REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.
Ambrose Bierce
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ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.
Ambrose Bierce
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DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
Ambrose Bierce
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Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.
Ambrose Bierce
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ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
Ambrose Bierce
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FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.
Ambrose Bierce
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An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
Ambrose Bierce
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A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
Ambrose Bierce
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Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.
Ambrose Bierce