Quote

At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.

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
Miserable
American
War
Frenchman
Others
Frenchmen
Make
Idiots
Abroad
Savages
Idiot

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PIGMY, n. One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians - who are Hogmies.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
Ambrose Bierce