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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

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
Relation
Destruction
Fool
Fools
Intimacy
Drawn
Mutual

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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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.
Ambrose Bierce
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Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
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There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.
Ambrose Bierce
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OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession it meant own, and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
Ambrose Bierce
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moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.
Ambrose Bierce
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At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
Ambrose Bierce
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Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Ambrose Bierce
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CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, Every man his own horse.
Ambrose Bierce
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SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam.
Ambrose Bierce
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ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! . . .
Ambrose Bierce
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To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.
Ambrose Bierce
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RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.
Ambrose Bierce
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Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.
Ambrose Bierce
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The wife, or bitter half.
Ambrose Bierce
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SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.
Ambrose Bierce
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OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
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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Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce