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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
Respect
Secures
Virtue
Professing
Doe
Despises
Hypocrite
Seeming
Despise
Virtues
Advantage

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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JESTER, n. An officer attached to the king's household to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances . . . the king's own conduct and decrees [being] sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind.
Ambrose Bierce
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Liberty is one of the imagination's most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people.
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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Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
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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Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
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EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.
Ambrose Bierce
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FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Ambrose Bierce
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LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
Ambrose Bierce
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Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hurry n: The dispatch of bunglers.
Ambrose Bierce
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PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
Ambrose Bierce
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The ghost is the outward and visible signs of an inward fear.
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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UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.
Ambrose Bierce
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One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of hands across the sea, and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night professions of eternal amity provide the nigh
Ambrose Bierce
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PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
Ambrose Bierce
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Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce