Quote

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

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
Another
Representing
Play
Attitudes
Life
Gestures
World
Opera
Speech
Postures
Whose
Motions
Attitude
Inhabitants
Song
Posture

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
There are two instruments worse than a clarinet - two clarinets.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Duck-bill, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back season.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, Every man his own horse.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber they fertilize.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The ghost is the outward and visible signs of an inward fear.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PIG, n. An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce