Quote

REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

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
Upon
Skin
Read
Skins
Truth
Bones
Firsts
Although
Review
Book
Neither
Bone
First
Doubt
Reviews
Work
Wisdom
Qualities
Quality
Holding

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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
Image
Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LINEN, n. A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
gratitude, n. A sentiment lying midway between a benefit received and a benefit expected.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.
Ambrose Bierce