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REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.

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
Desire
Reason
Probabilities
Probability
Scales
Weight

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa
Ambrose Bierce
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RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.
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There would be far fewer accidents if we could only teach telephone poles to be more careful.
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Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
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Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Ambrose Bierce
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ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
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No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
Ambrose Bierce
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Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.
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MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
Ambrose Bierce
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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
Ambrose Bierce
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A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.
Ambrose Bierce
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According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.
Ambrose Bierce
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PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.
Ambrose Bierce
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Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce
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Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else
Ambrose Bierce
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Convictions are variable to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.
Ambrose Bierce
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Spring beckons! All things to the call respond the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Ambrose Bierce
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Contempt the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Ambrose Bierce