Quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.

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

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

The echo of a platitude.

Bore: a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Abstainer: a weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Christian: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbour.

A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distin-quished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.

That sovereign of insufferables.