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Take not God's name in vain select a time when it will have 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
Time
Vain
Effect
God
Effects
Name
Names
Funny
Swearing
Take
Select

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose having a divine character inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions as... the Cow in India the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt.
Ambrose Bierce
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Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
Ambrose Bierce
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A popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
Ambrose Bierce
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Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound on yours.
Ambrose Bierce
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RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
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Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
Ambrose Bierce
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NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.
Ambrose Bierce
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TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (Glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (Mendax interminabilis).
Ambrose Bierce
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Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Ambrose Bierce
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
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PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Scriptures - The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce