Quote

PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn.

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
Always
Environment
Frequently
Learned
Sentiments
Learning
Creature
Philistine
Feeling
Following
Philistines
Feelings
Clean
Sentiment
Thought
Creatures
Commonly
Sometimes
Whose
Solemn
Mind
Fashion
Prosperous

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound on yours.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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
Image
MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A modern school where football is taught.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
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
Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
Ambrose Bierce