Quote

A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

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
Attachment
Deems
Creature
Leeches
Fresh
Penetrated
Creatures
Expedient
Dead
Turtle
Form
Turtles
Find
Shell
Long
Shells
Leech

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In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
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The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.
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Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
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Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
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When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.
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RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.
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PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.
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HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.
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Advice: The suggestions you give someone else which you hope will work for your benefit.
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RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, Homo ventrambulans.
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HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
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YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
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GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
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Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.
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The covers of this book are too far apart.
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WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity.
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Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
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ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination . . .
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RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.
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A lottery is a tax on stupidity.
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