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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

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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
High
Superstition
Purpose
Coins
Art
Superstitions
Doe
Serving
Arts
Lexicographer
Magic
Discreet
Name
Converting
Names
Coin

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A chop is a piece of leather skillfully attached to a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants.
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POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.
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Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
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I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
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A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
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MUMMY, n. - an ancient Egyptian handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.
Ambrose Bierce
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Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
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JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
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Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Ambrose Bierce
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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.
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Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
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God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
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Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
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PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
Ambrose Bierce
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PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce
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Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
Ambrose Bierce
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Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambrose Bierce