Quote

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

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
Cause
Influences
Influence
Immediate
Causes
Performance
Sense
Performances
Another
Intention
Mind
Effect
Prevalence
Whose
Involuntary
Effects
Remote

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
JESTER, n. An officer attached to the king's household to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances . . . the king's own conduct and decrees [being] sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A man is the sum of his ancestors to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
To the eye of failure success is an accident.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed advantageous to embrace.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce