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Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

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
Effect
Inscription
Effects
Inscriptions
Dying
Epitaph
Virtue
Tomb
Death
Tombs
Acquired
Virtues
Showing
Retroactive

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.
Ambrose Bierce
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MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.
Ambrose Bierce
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Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
Ambrose Bierce
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PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument as, He presided at the piccolo.
Ambrose Bierce
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MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul in woman, the outlet of the heart.
Ambrose Bierce
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Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
Ambrose Bierce
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When in Rome, do as Rome does.
Ambrose Bierce
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Advice, the smallest current coin.
Ambrose Bierce
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Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce
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An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
Ambrose Bierce
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They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
Ambrose Bierce
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MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Ambrose Bierce
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MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
Ambrose Bierce
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In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
Ambrose Bierce