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

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
Source
Pointedly
Brain
Bluntly
Dispel
Rebuke
Opponent
Opponents
Error
Errors

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
Ambrose Bierce
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Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
Ambrose Bierce
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DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.
Ambrose Bierce
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CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.
Ambrose Bierce
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What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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There's no free will, says the philosopher To hang is most unjust. There is no free will, assents the officer We hang because we must.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.
Ambrose Bierce
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Immoral is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.
Ambrose Bierce
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ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
Ambrose Bierce
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PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.
Ambrose Bierce
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GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
Ambrose Bierce
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TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
Ambrose Bierce
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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
Ambrose Bierce
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WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions as, the wrath of God, the day of wrath, etc. . . .
Ambrose Bierce