1,237 Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.

Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

Advice, the smallest current coin.

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.