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IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.

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
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Wicked
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More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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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
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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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FOLLY, n. That gift and faculty divine whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
Ambrose Bierce
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Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Ambrose Bierce
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INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.
Ambrose Bierce
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SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.
Ambrose Bierce
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Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
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INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
Ambrose Bierce
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Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Ambrose Bierce
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PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
Ambrose Bierce
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If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
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You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.
Ambrose Bierce
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To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.
Ambrose Bierce
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MANICHEISM, n. The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.
Ambrose Bierce
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Scriptures - The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce
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REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.
Ambrose Bierce
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Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
Ambrose Bierce
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REVOLUTION, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. . . . the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.
Ambrose Bierce
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picture, n. A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three.
Ambrose Bierce