Quote

MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.

Ambrose Bierce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Something
Commemorate
Commemoration
Monument
Intended
Structure
Either
Cannot
Needs

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
You can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
Ambrose Bierce
Image
AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both - as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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