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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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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
Sees
Colored
London
Flag
Serve
Flags
Purpose
Signs
Hoisted
Certain
Troops
Forts
Appears
Vacant
Ships
Borne
Lots
Rags

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.
Ambrose Bierce
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DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
Ambrose Bierce
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Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
Ambrose Bierce
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MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.
Ambrose Bierce
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QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there.
Ambrose Bierce
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SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
Ambrose Bierce
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A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors - to dislodge the worms.
Ambrose Bierce
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Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Ambrose Bierce
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Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
Ambrose Bierce
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I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce
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Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
Ambrose Bierce
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INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
Ambrose Bierce
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RESPIRATOR, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.
Ambrose Bierce
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OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.
Ambrose Bierce
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USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
Ambrose Bierce
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It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce