1,237 Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

MUMMY, n. – an ancient Egyptian handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.

Condole – to show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.

An Italian proverb says: “The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.

Pun: A form of wit, to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.

It has been observed that one’s nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

Genius – to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure.

PICKANINNY, n. The young of the “Procyanthropos”, or “Americanus dominans”. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.