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DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

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
Preponderance
Succumb
Influences
Decide
Influence
Another

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
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HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
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Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.
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ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
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An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.
Ambrose Bierce
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EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
Ambrose Bierce
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Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
Ambrose Bierce
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Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
Ambrose Bierce
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LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.
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recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.
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Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
Ambrose Bierce
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Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.
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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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mine, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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The sum of religion, says Pythagoras, is to be like him thou worshipest. Had Pythagoras lived in our day he would have seen his mistake. The sum of modern religion is to make him thou worshipest like unto thyself.
Ambrose Bierce
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You can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
Ambrose Bierce
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God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
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Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.
Ambrose Bierce