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Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.

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
Fills
Foul
Fountain
Pool
Dunce
Sets
Dunces
Every
Slang
Bucket
Buckets

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
Ambrose Bierce
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Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce
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EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.
Ambrose Bierce
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Genius - to know without having learned to draw just conclusions from unknown premises to discern the soul of things.
Ambrose Bierce
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K, n. A consonant originally precisely that of our H, but altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of [one of two lofty columns in] the great temple of Jarute.
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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FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
Ambrose Bierce
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Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
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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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
Ambrose Bierce
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SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death.
Ambrose Bierce
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BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.
Ambrose Bierce
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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
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CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what does not clearly appear everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.
Ambrose Bierce
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A man is the sum of his ancestors to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
Ambrose Bierce
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Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
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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Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce
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ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
Ambrose Bierce