Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – circa 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran.
An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.
LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.
Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.
Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
prospect, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually forbidden.
When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.
MONAD, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter (see Molecule). The monad has body without bulk, and mind without manifestation - containing all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher. .
KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.