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A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.


Ambrose Bierce

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FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and s...
AMBROSE BIERCE There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” ~ Ambrose ...
J.J. MCAVOY No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary d...
DENIS WAITLEY Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is to...
ROELIF COE BRINKERHOFF Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed.
A.A. MILNE We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”
...
A.A. MILNE We begin to fight. The wind and I. Horns locked. Battling each other with elements.
LAURA DOCKRILL Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should ...
HOPE MIRRLEES Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. ...what I'm saying isn't for him. If my words were for him they would be different; softer, and more...
CHEYENNE BERANDI When he entered the anteroom, two women looked up at him. One was Miss Robertson, the governor's sec...
GEORGE P. ELLIOTT Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute, after noon, is night.
JOHN DONNE You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES What will make you a star is in you
SOTONYE ANGA This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people.
JOHN WYCLIFFE Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Oh happy day! A day to make a hay! And when it is mid-day, think about the day! And when you think a...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS This is your fault. I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone.
You don't even care, do yo...
J.K. SIMMONS I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I la...
CHARLES DICKENS Life is a re-discovery.
BRIAN BLESSED If you think that life is a celebration full of party poppers and merry go rounds it's not it's a ga...
GARY F EVANS... Life Is a Misconception.
DEYTH BANGER Life is a desire!
DEYTH BANGER To trust someone you must firstly remember that it is a two way street that will go all the way if y...
GARY F EVANS... It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER Your mind is a Microcosm of strength and power. There’s all the magic you need in it. When all els...
CHINONYE J. CHIDOLUE He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself
LOIS LOWRY The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
DANIEL WEBSTER There's no way you can justify somebody holding up a sign saying things like, 'Pray for more dead so...
BOB SWANSON If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS [The employees who toured with the Dead will feel the pinch, as well.] There's crew and there's secu...
THE GRATEFUL DEAD Every silver linings got a touch of grey
I will get by, I will get by, I will get by, I will sur...
THE GRATEFUL DEAD It's an unacceptable act. It is a matter of respect for the dead.
MICHALAKIS CHRISTODOULOU If we all took a minute to reflect upon the wrong we do we would be quite surprised or shocked.Inste...
GARY F EVANS... Ants can carry twenty times their own body weight, which is useful information if you're moving out ...
RON DARIAN The man I am today it's not the man of yesterday
CHRISTOPHER FUDGE is a broken man an outlaw?"

"More or less." Brienne answered.

Septon Meribald ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The summer sun continued to rise in the sky and propel shocks of heat down on the city and the heavy...
HUBERT SELBY JR. Nobody really wants to be your friend when they discover that you work with dead people.
REBECCA MCNUTT I just want silence... nothing less... nothing more.
DEYTH BANGER You Have Seen the Cure for Cancer Many Times, Even Right Now! So the Problem is Not Finding a Cure, ...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly wil...
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI A great future starts with what you can see
SOTONYE ANGA Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi...
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD For me, my life is a journey.
JAY ELECTRONICA I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY And they say
She's in the class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been that way since eigh...
ED SHEERAN I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN Undertaker certainly is a cornerstone of WWE, and just as I say to myself that I really would have l...
JOHN CENA We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of...
DAVY CROCKETT Our presence here is to be low-key, especially inside the funeral home. This is not about us. This i...
LT. DON WHITEHEAD I'll tell you," she says, getting up. "I just need a drink. You want one?"
"Now?" Libby makes ...
REBECCA JAMES Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one w...
JALALUDDIN MEVLANA RUMI The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...
SAM HARRIS Life is a risk.
CARMELO ANTHONY A Hazel é diferente. Ela caminha com leveza, velhote. Caminha com leveza sobre a Terra. A Hazel sab...
JOHN GREEN Sensei says funerals are not really for the dead. They are for those left behind. "The dead are long...
SANDY FUSSELL We are deeply saddened by his death. We send our condolences to the Mzimela family. He will be given...
ALEX WRIGHT A name is a kind of face by whereby one is known
THOMAS FULLER If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, t...
MARK MCKINNON What you see on the freeway is just what there is,
a funeral procession of the dead,
the g...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI Diaulus, lately a doctor, is now an undertaker' what he does as an undertaker, he used to do also a...
MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIAL Las Vegas is the perfect host city to bring new energy to the Miss America Pageant. It should make f...
ART MCMASTER Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY Life is a journey. When we stop, things don't go right.
POPE FRANCIS How do you know about the world is real?...
How?...
How you don't think that you are locke...
DEYTH BANGER The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI It's a great pity that things weren't so arranged that an empty head, like an empty stomach, wouldn'...
UNKNOWN We should be ready for a change.
DEYTH BANGER Did you see more glass?
J.D. SALINGER She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ...
J.D. SALINGER Man is mortal. Everyone has to die some day or the other. But one must resolve to lay down one's lif...
B. R. AMBEDKAR This was not the officer's funeral, ... We did it out of respect. We're not going to take away from ...
BARBARA MILLER

More Ambrose Bierce

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the e...
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
AMBROSE BIERCE Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for,...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Doubt is the father of invention.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
AMBROSE BIERCE Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
AMBROSE BIERCE Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Liberty:one of imaginations most precious possessions.
AMBROSE BIERCE Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimist: a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth b...
AMBROSE BIERCE For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His e...
AMBROSE BIERCE Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understand...
AMBROSE BIERCE Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no g...
AMBROSE BIERCE Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
AMBROSE BIERCE The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Marriage. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, m...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking th...
AMBROSE BIERCE Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate ...
AMBROSE BIERCE An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes...
AMBROSE BIERCE Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
AMBROSE BIERCE Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his co...
AMBROSE BIERCE Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no...
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understan...
AMBROSE BIERCE Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
AMBROSE BIERCE Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad gover...
AMBROSE BIERCE Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
AMBROSE BIERCE A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
AMBROSE BIERCE Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly un...
AMBROSE BIERCE Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
AMBROSE BIERCE A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
AMBROSE BIERCE A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
AMBROSE BIERCE As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolen...
AMBROSE BIERCE Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
AMBROSE BIERCE Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
AMBROSE BIERCE A man is known by the company he organizes.
AMBROSE BIERCE Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapaciti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward ap...
AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
AMBROSE BIERCE An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
AMBROSE BIERCE Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
AMBROSE BIERCE Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comforta...
AMBROSE BIERCE Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
AMBROSE BIERCE Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
AMBROSE BIERCE Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Mis...
AMBROSE BIERCE Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is please...
AMBROSE BIERCE Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
AMBROSE BIERCE A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a cont...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
AMBROSE BIERCE Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is give...
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscien...
AMBROSE BIERCE A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
AMBROSE BIERCE To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
AMBROSE BIERCE An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly k...
AMBROSE BIERCE Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.
AMBROSE BIERCE Habit is a shackle for the free.
AMBROSE BIERCE Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
AMBROSE BIERCE Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AMBROSE BIERCE Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, ad...
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly tha...
AMBROSE BIERCE The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
AMBROSE BIERCE When in Rome, do as Rome does.
AMBROSE BIERCE To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Rom...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by frie...
AMBROSE BIERCE Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
AMBROSE BIERCE Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things withou...
AMBROSE BIERCE Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
AMBROSE BIERCE Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Woman absent is woman dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abscond. To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their deso...
AMBROSE BIERCE A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wi...
AMBROSE BIERCE The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
AMBROSE BIERCE ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
AMBROSE BIERCE ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
AMBROSE BIERCE Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoulde...
AMBROSE BIERCE DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
AMBROSE BIERCE There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Mus...
AMBROSE BIERCE HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was a com...
AMBROSE BIERCE ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A m...
AMBROSE BIERCE YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the So...
AMBROSE BIERCE Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscie...
AMBROSE BIERCE One who is in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE OBSESSED, p.p. Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was onc...
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled wh...
AMBROSE BIERCE When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of...
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
AMBROSE BIERCE ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapaci...
AMBROSE BIERCE LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property s...
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
AMBROSE BIERCE Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
AMBROSE BIERCE Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affai...
AMBROSE BIERCE Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
AMBROSE BIERCE Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth ke...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the wor...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the...
AMBROSE BIERCE Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction ...
AMBROSE BIERCE The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
AMBROSE BIERCE TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeab...
AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and wa...
AMBROSE BIERCE The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
AMBROSE BIERCE