Ambrose Bierce quotes

Insurrection, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad
government.
Ambrose Bierce

Non-combatant, n. A dead Quaker.
Ambrose Bierce

Virtues, n. pl. Certain abstentions.
Ambrose Bierce

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the
Unknowable.
Ambrose Bierce

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
Ambrose Bierce

Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce

Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern
Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of
America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior,
have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental
work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no
other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
Ambrose Bierce

Congratulation, n. The civility of envy.
Ambrose Bierce

Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
Ambrose Bierce

Neighbor, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows
how to make us disobedient.
Ambrose Bierce

Back, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.
Ambrose Bierce

Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A
total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from
inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce