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A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

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
Keep
Wickedness
Mind
Meditate
Men
Brotherhood
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Awful
Piously
Sin
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Examples

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Backbite: To ''speak of a man as you find him'' when he can't find you.
Ambrose Bierce
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KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a crowned head, although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.
Ambrose Bierce
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Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ambrose Bierce
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WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.
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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Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce
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ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.
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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PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose Bierce
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Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral.
Ambrose Bierce
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INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Ambrose Bierce
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A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.
Ambrose Bierce
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RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas.
Ambrose Bierce
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Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.
Ambrose Bierce
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FORCE, n. Force is but might, the teacher said p/ That definition's just./ The boy said naught but throught instead,/ Remembering his pounded head:/ Force is not might but must!
Ambrose Bierce
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Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
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