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UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
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
Lived
Locke
Law
Kant
Understanding
Rode
House
Cerebral
Nature
Enables
Life
Roof
Secretion
Horse
Exhaustively
Laws
Expounded
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
RESPIRATOR, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.
Ambrose Bierce
Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
Ambrose Bierce
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands, you are safe, for you can watch both his.
Ambrose Bierce
PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
Ambrose Bierce
Evolutionary biology is genuinely scientific, but more than that it opens the door to a world more marvellous than any Christian fundamentalist has ever read into the pages of the Bible.
Ambrose Bierce
MAGNITUDE, n. Size [that is] purely relative. If everything in the universe were increased 1,000 diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been.
Ambrose Bierce
predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Ambrose Bierce
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
Ambrose Bierce
Here's to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands.
Ambrose Bierce
TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Ambrose Bierce
ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
Ambrose Bierce
Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce
The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.
Ambrose Bierce
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
Ambrose Bierce
USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
Ambrose Bierce
predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.
Ambrose Bierce
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose Bierce
