Quote

Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

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
Operations
Humorous
Affair
Surgical
Medical
Undergoing
Medicine
Arrange
Doctors
Temporal
May
Operation
Live
Affairs

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an old man. Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an old book.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions where it can get a foothold it makes a stand where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, jacere, to throw, because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EXISTENCE, n. A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,/ Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:/ From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge/ Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: O fudge!
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PICKANINNY, n. The young of the Procyanthropos, or Americanus dominans. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
Ambrose Bierce