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BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.

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
Proportioned
Earnestness
Asks
Belief
Given
Something

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Aristocrats: n. fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts - guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
Ambrose Bierce
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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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Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce
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DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.
Ambrose Bierce
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Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
Ambrose Bierce
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PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.
Ambrose Bierce
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Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
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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He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.
Ambrose Bierce
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A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
Ambrose Bierce
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Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.
Ambrose Bierce
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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
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ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.
Ambrose Bierce
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Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. The Mad Philosopher, 1697
Ambrose Bierce
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Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
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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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