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One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

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
Advantage
Respect
Secures
Virtue
Professing
Doe
Despises
Hypocrite
Seeming
Despise
Virtues

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.
Ambrose Bierce
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DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
Ambrose Bierce
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RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
Ambrose Bierce
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As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it.
Ambrose Bierce
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ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
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CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what does not clearly appear everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.
Ambrose Bierce
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resolute, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.
Ambrose Bierce
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Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.
Ambrose Bierce
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Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable as, the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur..
Ambrose Bierce
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Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce
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DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
Ambrose Bierce
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WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can be made . . . also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.
Ambrose Bierce
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April fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.
Ambrose Bierce
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The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce
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Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce
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critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONARCH, n. A person engaged in reigning. Formerly the monarch ruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjects have had occasion to learn.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
Ambrose Bierce