FastSaying

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.


Ambrose Bierce

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
ROGER SCRUTON AN IMAGINARY AXIS OF EVIL: IRAN FROM THE INSIDE,
ANNE MILLER ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.
AMBROSE BIERCE To have an imaginary friend, first you need to be an imaginary friend.
VICTOR GEERE A lot of families just do the basic backseat fight where the two siblings draw the imaginary line be...
JOHN CASSIDY Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and t...
FEDERICO FELLINI Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows ...
ALISON GOPNIK Last night my imaginary friend died. So I took him to an imaginary graveyard and buried him in imagi...
YAMIN RASHEED Love, in present-day society, is just the exchange of two imaginary pictures, and the contact of one...
CHAMFORT No knowledge comes from the outside world or an imaginary supernatural paradise.
ABHIJIT NASKAR Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.
CATHERINE DOUZEL The consolation of an imaginary thing is still a real consolation.
ROGER SCRUTON Humility is not an imaginary thing.
JULIO IGLESIAS imaginary numbers.
LEONHARD EULER Literature is the real life of imaginary people.
STEFANOS LIVOS PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
AMBROSE BIERCE I'm not interested in an imaginary world.
EDWARD BOND Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are f...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowled...
KURT VONNEGUT The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowled...
KURT VONNEGUT JR. Mandy would much rather have imaginary friends who were real than real friends who were imaginary.
REBECCA MCNUTT Atreyu comes from a land called Fantasia. It's an imaginary land.
NOAH HATHAWAY He was about to cross a point of no return. The place separating him from the imaginary line in the ...
JAIME ALLISON PARKER From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.
WALT WHITMAN Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while your preachers too often speak of thing...
THOMAS BETTERTON The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us re...
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU If you divide something that is essentially one,
you will end up with imaginary infinite numbe...
TOBA BETA You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend
RICHARD JENI Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon ...
NEIL GAIMAN I can't even trust my own imaginary dog. How much lower can a person get?
MEG ROSOFF Where's your dog?" Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water. Justin thought he mus...
MEG ROSOFF This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. Th...
NEIL GAIMAN Imaginary evils are incurable.
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH Imaginary evils are incurable
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH The poet Marianne Moore famously wrote of 'real toads in imaginary gardens,' and the labyrinth offer...
REBECCA SOLNIT We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
SIMONE WEIL I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.
MARY MCCARTHY An imaginary friend is often what the child needs it to be.
BARBARA GOLDSTEIN Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars,...
FRANCIS BACON Life is much cheaper in the profound imaginary, if you can't afford needs other than... dreaming.
MARIANA FULGER I became to myself an imaginary figure of great excellence, daring and glamor.
RUDOLPH VALENTINO Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
MARIANNE MOORE My age and the ages of my children are imaginary numbers.
CAROL COVIN Paranoia. The more you think of an imaginary problem, the more you feel as though it’s real –
SIMONA PANOVA Suspicion is a mental picture seen through an imaginary keyhole
THOMAS PAINE My mom said I was an escapist at heart.... that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one
AMY PLUM I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
EMO PHILLIPS Our imaginary monsters scare us the most....jh
JIMBO HENDERSON I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
EMO PHILIPS The imaginary is what tends to become real.
ANDRé BRETON I had an imaginary friend. I don't know when I stopped having an imaginary friend, but my mom an...
CC SABATHIA The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed...
ROALD DAHL The real world is much smaller than the imaginary
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.
A. J. P. TAYLOR The bullshit detector is the biggest enemy
of every religion."

From: "Gesels van een...
A.J. BEIRENS Most obstacles are imaginary; the rest are only temporary.
SCOTT SORRELL Being engrossed in the real challenges of life leaves little time for the imaginary challenges of ga...
DAVID L. HATTON Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons ...
ABHIJIT NASKAR Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh…
LAINI TAYLOR Even before the letter he'd been divided: one part of him swanning with Jay Gatsby around an imagina...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG To the guy who created imaginary numbers in Math: I hate you.
ANONYMOUS Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; he is as real as Alexander the Great.
DEJAN STOJANOVIC The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day se...
THOMAS M. DISCH Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.
JOHN RUSKIN Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary go...
SIMONE WEIL My imaginary friend thinks he has problems.
ANONYMOUS Some problems are imaginary and not real.
RAJEN JANI Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees ...
LEV GROSSMAN History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Real atheist is not the one that does not believe in an imaginary big monkey, but the one that gives...
ABHIJIT NASKAR The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
FRANKLIN P. ADAMS Any acting is a stretch of the imagination. That's your job. Acting is truth in imaginary circum...
SAM WORTHINGTON We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people...
BLAISE PASCAL The ages of my children and the number of years I've been married are imaginary numbers.
CAROL COVIN Fear is the imaginary response to something that has not happened.
STEVE MARABOLI I've accepted the fact I have mental illness but when my imaginary friends start calling me crazy th...
STANLEY VICTOR PASKAVICH Contrary to what Kafka does, I always like to refer all of my fictions to the level of reality, He, ...
MANUEL PUIG As the daydreams grew longer, the distinction between what was real and what was imaginary grew less...
FENNEL HUDSON To talk of 'a peaceful North Korean nuclear industry' is to talk of an imaginary animal, like a unic...
NICHOLAS EBERSTADT I was a real daydreamer at school, gazing out of the window and losing myself in imaginary worlds.
TALULAH RILEY What is the Other?" they ask.
The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ...
PAULO COELHO The creature who lives inside my brain suggested I do it,” I offered tentatively. “It was very c...
JOSS SHELDON The realisation that limitations are imaginary will make you strong and overpowering.
STEPHEN RICHARDS Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren't.
BARBARA SHER Shit on your whole mortifying, imaginary, and symbolic theater!
GILLES DELEUZE A child’s imaginary playmate just might actually be there.
DOUG DILLON Just because it's imaginary, doesn't mean it's not real.
T.L. RESE One good, compassionate and caring Self is a thousand times greater than all the fanciful, imaginary...
ABHIJIT NASKAR Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in...
WILLIAM C. SAMPLES It is not right to associate the fight against international terrorist networks with an imaginary cr...
OMAR BONGO Life – a sort of a plate of real-imaginary from which we nibble together with the birds of light a...
MARIANA FULGER Instead of inventing imaginary friends, I invented whole imaginary worlds. They were elaborate scena...
ROBIN WASSERMAN I wanted to create a hill indoors. This is the only imaginary landscape [in the exhibit].
MAYA LIN I still have imaginary friends who I talk to in my head.
LEE RYAN THE DECLARATION of the Rights of Man at the end of the eighteenth century was a turning point in his...
HANNAH ARENDT The imaginary world has always been the most fun place for me to be.
CLAIRE FORLANI Karen- I'm not good or real...I'm evil, and imaginary.
WILL & GRACE The word 'God' usually signifies 'Lord', but every lord is not a God. It is the domi...
ISAAC NEWTON Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edm...
C.S. LEWIS There are enough real enemies and threats in the world without having to invent imaginary ones.
CHRISTINA ENGELA

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