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If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.

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
Greater
Great
Much
Would
Accounted
Contemporaries
Fame

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
Ambrose Bierce
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PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
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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Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.
Ambrose Bierce
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An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
Ambrose Bierce
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FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London
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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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.
Ambrose Bierce
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An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.
Ambrose Bierce
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RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
Ambrose Bierce
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PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.
Ambrose Bierce
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PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
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PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.
Ambrose Bierce
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Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
Ambrose Bierce
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Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Ambrose Bierce
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Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.
Ambrose Bierce