Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
When you doubt, abstain.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Edible, adj.: 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.
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
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.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
