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ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
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
Emulation
Meanest
Envied
Adapted
Envy
Capacity
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Potable, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which it is a medicine.
Ambrose Bierce
FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.
Ambrose Bierce
Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Ambrose Bierce
Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Ambrose Bierce
A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.
Ambrose Bierce
The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
Ambrose Bierce
Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
Ambrose Bierce
A man is the sum of his ancestors to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
Ambrose Bierce
Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
Ambrose Bierce
PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method . . . of obtaining money by false pretences [by] reading character in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false. . . for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word dupe.
Ambrose Bierce
INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned unless he had a mind to - in opposition to the Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the beginning.
Ambrose Bierce
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
Ambrose Bierce
Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.
Ambrose Bierce
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
hybrid, n. A pooled issue.
Ambrose Bierce
PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
Ambrose Bierce
Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.
Ambrose Bierce
Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.
Ambrose Bierce
