Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – circa 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran.
ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
VIRTUES, n. pl. Certain abstentions.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver. As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet, Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him, Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him; So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him, Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him, Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it, And finds at last he might as well have paid it.
CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird. '
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
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.
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.