Quote

Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

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
Fortune
Shifted
Fate
Astrology
Days
Shoulders
Responsibility
Neighbor
Stars
Burden
Upon
Easily
Star
Unload
Luck
Customary

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system - an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands, you are safe, for you can watch both his.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber they fertilize.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Brain, v. [as in to brain]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly to dispel a source of error in an opponent.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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
Image
DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
Ambrose Bierce