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INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

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
Advantage
Understanding
Language
Understand
Two
Interpreter
Persons
Repeating
Different
Enables
Would
Languages

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PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
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LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers - particularly to those who love not wisely but other men's wives.
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DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
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TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
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Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
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Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
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In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.
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Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.
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Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
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MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
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MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
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INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned unless he had a mind to - in opposition to the Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the beginning.
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Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.
Ambrose Bierce
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GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.
Ambrose Bierce
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You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
Ambrose Bierce
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RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.
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The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.
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I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
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What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
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