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MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.

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
Humour
Kept
Dinner
Asked
Hypnotism
Clothes
Incredulity
Science
Carriage
Good
Carriages
Wore

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
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The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
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In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
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WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can be made . . . also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.
Ambrose Bierce
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A miracle is an act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.
Ambrose Bierce
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Truth - An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
Ambrose Bierce
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Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce
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Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Ambrose Bierce
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Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
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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Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
Ambrose Bierce
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Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
Ambrose Bierce
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actually, adv. Perhaps possibly.
Ambrose Bierce
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RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.
Ambrose Bierce
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QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.
Ambrose Bierce
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RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.
Ambrose Bierce
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OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
Ambrose Bierce
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ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long.
Ambrose Bierce
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PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
Ambrose Bierce