Quote

Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.

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
Distinguished
Molecule
Atoms
Differs
Closer
Indivisible
Ultimate
Resemblance
Also
Atom
Matter
Unit
Molecules
Units
Ions

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
To seek a justification for a decision already made.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.
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
Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
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
Image
RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Human nature is pretty well balanced for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Definition: CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage, to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound . . . . properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of hands across the sea, and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night professions of eternal amity provide the nigh
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
Ambrose Bierce