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A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.

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
Master
Rail
Masters
Formidable
Easy
Cynicism
Art
Cheap
Everything
Discrimination
Task
Tasks
Rails
Accomplish
Accomplishes

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
Ambrose Bierce
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Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
Ambrose Bierce
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Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hippogriff, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.
Ambrose Bierce
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YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.
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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PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that - stone walls do not a prison make.
Ambrose Bierce
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A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
Ambrose Bierce
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NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.
Ambrose Bierce
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To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.
Ambrose Bierce
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An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
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GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
Ambrose Bierce
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ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.
Ambrose Bierce
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KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
Ambrose Bierce
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REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
Ambrose Bierce
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Behavior, n. Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by breeding.
Ambrose Bierce
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RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.
Ambrose Bierce
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Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
Ambrose Bierce
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ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
Ambrose Bierce