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Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere survivals - as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.

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
Making
Symbols
Urns
Else
Survival
Funereal
Cannot
Supposed
Conceals
Give
Mere
Carved
Many
Name
Monuments
Giving
Stand
Helplessness
Something
Stop
Memorial
Names
Monument

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Appetite, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
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HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
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Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.
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A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
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Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
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Twice – Once too often.
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
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Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
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Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
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Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.
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PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.
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Gout, a physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient
Ambrose Bierce
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BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Ambrose Bierce
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Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
Ambrose Bierce
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EXISTENCE, n. A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,/ Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:/ From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge/ Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: O fudge!
Ambrose Bierce
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TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics.
Ambrose Bierce
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Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
Ambrose Bierce