Quote

PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

Ambrose Bierce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Dead
Life
Phonograph
Restores
Noises
Irritating
Toys
Noise

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
He laughs best who laughs least.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe . . . . The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
alone, adj. In bad company.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors - to dislodge the worms.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
Ambrose Bierce