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NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.

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
Ground
Newton
Philosophy
Disciple
Universe
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More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
Ambrose Bierce
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Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
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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PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.
Ambrose Bierce
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A penny saved is a penny to squander.
Ambrose Bierce
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PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
Ambrose Bierce
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READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in dialect and humor in slang.
Ambrose Bierce
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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
Ambrose Bierce
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Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
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URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, I beg your pardon, and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.
Ambrose Bierce
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Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
Ambrose Bierce
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The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
Ambrose Bierce
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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar tumble-bug. It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future Age knows her as the Dream.
Ambrose Bierce
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EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
Ambrose Bierce
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moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Ambrose Bierce