1,237 Quotes by Ambrose Bierce

While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.

In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.

Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting

REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.

REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.

J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, "jacere", "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.

ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.

General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.

San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen