Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
Ambrose Bierce
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Existence
Transcended
Natural
Tail
Part
Spine
World
Tails
Limitations
Limitation
Independent
Animal
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.
Ambrose Bierce
Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce
HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
Ambrose Bierce
Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Ambrose Bierce
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce
MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.
Ambrose Bierce
NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.
Ambrose Bierce
PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce
Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
War: A by-product of the arts of peace.
Ambrose Bierce
DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
Ambrose Bierce
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
recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.
Ambrose Bierce
GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
Ambrose Bierce
MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.
Ambrose Bierce
Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
Ambrose Bierce