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The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.
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
Respect
Rich
Poor
Self
Men
Admittance
Favor
Favors
Price
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable as, the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur..
Ambrose Bierce
PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
Ambrose Bierce
DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce
Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Ambrose Bierce
Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
Ambrose Bierce
UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.
Ambrose Bierce
VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
Ambrose Bierce
OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.
Ambrose Bierce
QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.
Ambrose Bierce
PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose Bierce
INCOMPATIBILITY, n. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek-eyed matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to wear a moustache.
Ambrose Bierce
MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.
Ambrose Bierce
PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
Ambrose Bierce
The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
Ambrose Bierce
Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future Age knows her as the Dream.
Ambrose Bierce
YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.
Ambrose Bierce
True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked Unknown, and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in honoring the memory of him of whom no memory remains to honor but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.
Ambrose Bierce
