Quote

DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

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
Privacy
Private
Progress
Stage
Moral
Degradation
Social
Stages
Political
Station
Stations

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system - an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Strive not for singularity in dress Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
actually, adv. Perhaps possibly.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Convictions are variable to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PENITENT, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
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