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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
Cannot
Supposed
Conceals
Give
Mere
Carved
Many
Name
Monuments
Giving
Stand
Helplessness
Something
Stop
Memorial
Names
Monument
Making
Symbols
Urns
Else
Survival
Funereal
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
FOLLY, n. That gift and faculty divine whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
Ambrose Bierce
While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.
Ambrose Bierce
PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence an attribute of the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used ... as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.
Ambrose Bierce
RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Ambrose Bierce
True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.
Ambrose Bierce
PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
Ambrose Bierce
Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin.
Ambrose Bierce
Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Ambrose Bierce
Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
Ambrose Bierce
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
REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.
Ambrose Bierce
ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
Ambrose Bierce
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
Ambrose Bierce
UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
Ambrose Bierce
OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
Ambrose Bierce
Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is before.
Ambrose Bierce
