Skip to content
Ambrose Bierce
Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
“Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.”
Ambrose Bierce
“There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.”
Ambrose Bierce
“The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.”
Ambrose Bierce
“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”
Ambrose Bierce
“To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Doubt is the father of invention.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.”
Ambrose Bierce
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.”
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.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.”
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.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.”
Ambrose Bierce
