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A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the buffone, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.
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
Characters
Ludicrous
Therefore
Incompetence
Serious
Apes
Character
Clown
Play
Popularity
Italian
Plays
Popular
Imitated
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
Ambrose Bierce
QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
Ambrose Bierce
LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss yet when lost it is not missed.
Ambrose Bierce
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Ambrose Bierce
INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce
Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
Ambrose Bierce
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce
pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.
Ambrose Bierce
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
Ambrose Bierce
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting
Ambrose Bierce
MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
Ambrose Bierce
True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked Unknown, and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in honoring the memory of him of whom no memory remains to honor but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.
Ambrose Bierce
HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.
Ambrose Bierce
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose Bierce
He laughs best who laughs least.
Ambrose Bierce
