1,237 Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

Bride, n. - A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.

ABSENCE, n. That which "makes the heart grow fonder" — of absence. Absence of mind is the cerebral condition essential to success in popular preaching. It is sometimes termed lack of sense.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.A striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself, whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.

O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!

ALLEGORY, n. A metaphor in three volumes and a tiger.