Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

A modern school where football is taught.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

Achievement; the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Congratulations is the civility of envy.

WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.

Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Philosophy - A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Lawyer – One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.