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MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.

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
Materials
Existence
Important
Distinguished
Imaginary
Actual
Material

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce
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Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce
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NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
Ambrose Bierce
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ZEUS /n./ The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.
Ambrose Bierce
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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.
Ambrose Bierce
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PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow.
Ambrose Bierce
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Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
Ambrose Bierce
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CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.
Ambrose Bierce
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Ambrose Bierce
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They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
Ambrose Bierce
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To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.
Ambrose Bierce
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Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce
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CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.
Ambrose Bierce
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PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions where it can get a foothold it makes a stand where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall.
Ambrose Bierce
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
Ambrose Bierce
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Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
Ambrose Bierce