Quote

Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. The pig is taught by sermons and epistles / To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

Ambrose Bierce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Supposed
Bristles
Atheism
Epistles
Based
Swine
Taught
Resemblance
Upon
Sermons
Men
Pigs
Think
Reverence
Thinking
Supreme
Snout

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Alligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MUMMY, n. - an ancient Egyptian handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Mad adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves at odds with the majority in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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
Image
hybrid, n. A pooled issue.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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