1,237 Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Example is better than following it.

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.

JESTER, n. An officer attached to the king's household to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances . . . the king's own conduct and decrees [being] sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind.

Lawyer – One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forebearance among men.

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

Congratulations is the civility of envy.

LUMINARY, One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it.