Quote

CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what does not clearly appear everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.

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
Doe
Dog
Hades
Wanted
Later
Entrance
Whose
Entrances
Watches
Guard
Watch
Sooner
Duty
Appear
Nobody
Clearly
Everybody
Carry
Cerberus

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
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
Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.
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
One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of hands across the sea, and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night professions of eternal amity provide the nigh
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination . . .
Ambrose Bierce
Image
FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Contempt the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LUMINARY, One who throws light upon a subject as an editor by not writing about it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Learning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
SEINE, n. A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut stones.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.
Ambrose Bierce