Motivational Ambrose Bierce Quotes:- Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842– circa 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named as one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.
Inspirational Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Ambrose Bierce
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s a resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Ambrose Bierce
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Ambrose Bierce
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Ambrose Bierce
Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Ambrose Bierce
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Ambrose Bierce
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
Land: A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Ambrose Bierce
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Ambrose Bierce
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Ambrose Bierce
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
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
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Ambrose Bierce
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce
Quotation, The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly of a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce
Destiny: A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, their truth is – it is her shadow.
Ambrose Bierce
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Ambrose Bierce
When you doubt, abstain.
Ambrose Bierce
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Ambrose Bierce
Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce
Doubt is the father of invention.
Ambrose Bierce
Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
Ambrose Bierce
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Ambrose Bierce
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London.
Ambrose Bierce
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Ambrose Bierce
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Ambrose Bierce
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Ambrose Bierce
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce
An egotist is a person of low taste – more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Ambrose Bierce
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Ambrose Bierce
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
Ambrose Bierce
Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Ambrose Bierce
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
Ambrose Bierce
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Ambrose Bierce
Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead.
Ambrose Bierce
Cynic, a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Deliberation, The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
Ambrose Bierce
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
Ambrose Bierce
Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
Ambrose Bierce
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Ambrose Bierce
Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
Ambrose Bierce
Perseverance – a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Ambrose Bierce
Genealogy, n. An account of one’s descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.
Ambrose Bierce
Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man’s choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce
War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
The battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
Ambrose Bierce
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce
Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
Ambrose Bierce
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ambrose Bierce
Amnesty, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce
Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Ambrose Bierce
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
Ambrose Bierce
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Ambrose Bierce
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power or the consideration to be dead.
Ambrose Bierce
Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can’t find you.
Ambrose Bierce
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Ambrose Bierce
Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Ambrose Bierce
Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
Ambrose Bierce
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambrose Bierce
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Ambrose Bierce
Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
Alien – an American sovereign in his probationary state.
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Duty – that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Ambrose Bierce
Abscond – to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Ambrose Bierce
Alliance – in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce
Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
Ambrose Bierce
