3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Convent – a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Consul – in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce 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.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Edible – good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Destiny: A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
3 December 2020 Ambrose Bierce Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
