Quote

Brain, v. [as in to brain]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

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
Brain
Bluntly
Dispel
Rebuke
Opponent
Opponents
Error
Errors
Source
Pointedly

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
You can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
Ambrose Bierce
Image
NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!
Ambrose Bierce
Image
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce